


Ghosts in the Machine

by surreallis



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-06
Updated: 2010-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-07 01:52:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 46,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surreallis/pseuds/surreallis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack wakes alone in a stark, apocalyptic, industrial world with fleeting memories of how SG-1 got there and what has happened to them.  He struggles to find the rest of his team; and they battle both a harsh environment and a cold, calculating enemy in an attempt to survive and find a way home again.  Sort of cyberpunk-ish.  Very team-oriented. Long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts in the Machine

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Eve11 for the SG1 Team ficathon on Live Journal. She wanted a new gate address and didn't want trees, ruins or the Goa'uld.
> 
> Thanks to Courser for the once over. It was duty above and beyond this time, bud.

**[ dislocated ]**

_Sam_

There was an anomaly in the system.

She could feel it. It wasn't critical, and there were more important matters to attend to so she tried to ignore it. There were little bits of data hanging up on it though, and the anomaly picked at her brain. She kept looking at it.

She could divert the stream around it and return to fix it later, when other systems didn't need as much attention.

She diverted the flow and then left her signature. She laid down a trail of breadcrumbs so she could find it again.

When the stream was running smoothly, she relaxed. And then she tensed.

Something was wrong.

She felt it like a power surge. Somebody was just outside. Somebody…

Her heart sped up. There was a strange sense of déjà vu and something else… something more tactile. Then it was gone, and the air seemed clearer.

She turned her attention back to the data stream and forgot.

\+ + +

_Daniel_

He hesitated when he saw her. He furrowed his brows.

Suddenly he was standing next to her and he couldn't remember what he was supposed to do. There was something… something interesting here. Something he needed to study closer. He was leaning close to her and she didn't move. He thought that maybe he was supposed to touch her, so he brought his fingers close…

There was a_ click_ in his head and then he was standing at the door, the woman forgotten. There was an obsolete unit in Sector 10 that needed to be recycled. He started forward, and he didn't look back.

\+ + +

_Teal'c_

The cell was dark and cool, and he could hear water running somewhere behind the stone walls. He was underground, possibly quite deep.

He was not sure if it was night or day or how much time had passed since they'd stepped through the stargate into this world. Days, weeks, maybe hours and he only thought it was longer because he was losing his mind.

No. No, it had been days at least. Not much longer. In the time since he woke in this place, no one had approached him. He had not heard any voice other than his own, and no one had brought him food or water.

He was very thirsty. His symbiote was conserving energy. His throat ached from the lack of water and from his shouts into nothingness. He'd called for his captors at first, at times both enraged and calm, but that seemed like a long time ago. Now he only called for O'Neill. He was not sure if Major Carter or Daniel Jackson were alive or dead, free or confined, but he refused to give away their numbers or risk their possible freedom by calling out their names.

By calling for O'Neill, he called for all of SG-1.

They would not leave him in this place to die; of this he was sure. Whether or not they would find him in time was another matter.

But his symbiote would keep him alive… for awhile at least. For now he had time to wait.

\+ + +

**[ obsolete ]**

_Jack_

Jack woke slowly and confused. Not always an unusual state for him.

Somewhat more uncommon was the stench that hit his sinuses and sliced through his haze of sleep.

Pain pounded in Jack's head, and he felt an immobilizing lethargy through every inch of his body. He was weak. He froze when he felt a tugging at his jacket. Fingers pulled at his jacket's zipper. He heard breathing. He barely opened his eyes, peering out through mere slits.

He was too groggy to notice anything except the man's beard, dark but threaded with gray, and the way he mumbled to himself as he pulled and grabbed at the jacket's zipper. Jack brought his hand up suddenly and grabbed the man's wrist. It took a lot of effort.

The man gasped and looked, startled, into Jack's open eyes. "You're alive," he exclaimed.

"Yes," Jack whispered hoarsely.

The man easily freed his hand from Jack's grip, and he jumped back on his heels and considered Jack with a frightened look. "Are you obsolete?"

Jack struggled to stay awake. His head ached fiercely and shadows swam in his vision. "Huh?"

The man ran his gaze down Jack's form. His eyes stopped on Jack's chest and with nimble fingers, he picked up one of Jack's dog tags and stared at it.

Jack grabbed his wrist again. "Mine," he whispered.

The man jerked his hand back and considered Jack suspiciously. "You're an Interceptor."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

But the man was panicking now, eyes wild. "Then you're a crawler!" His feet had a hard time finding traction as he scrambled to his feet and ran away.

Jack passed out.

\+ + +

**[ dissonance ]**

When he woke again, his head had stopped with the painful pounding. His body still ached, and he slowly became aware of something hard poking him in the back. He shifted with a groan, and then came fully awake as he slid downward a few feet. He flipped himself over onto his stomach and looked around.

He was lying at the foot of a huge pile of… junk. It could have easily filled the gateroom at the SGC, and there was a foul scent emanating from within it. Metal, plastic, paper, fabric, and things he couldn't begin to identify surrounded him. The pile was in a big yard and surrounded by a fence. A circular building towered above the yard. He supposed it was a building anyway. It was building-sized, but had no windows. Nor any sharp corners. It was rounded and a dull, dark, gunmetal gray. Actually, it looked as if it were made of metal as well. It was several dozen stories high where he sat looking up at it. He couldn't see further as the top seemed to disappear into darkness.

There was a sharp, scraping noise above him, and when he looked up, two doors opened in an extension protruding from the building. He was suddenly rained with debris, and he frantically scrambled away from the pile. He sat with his back against a wall and looked around. He saw no sign of the rest of SG-1, nor any other human being, with the exception of the man who'd tried to steal his jacket earlier. Somehow Jack didn't think he was a typical representation of the people of this world.

He couldn't remember much. He remembered stepping through the gate. He vaguely remembered coming through the other side with Carter grinning at him like he'd just said something witty, and Daniel had been furrowing his brow because they'd gated into a small, enclosed room. He thought he remembered Teal'c shouting a warning. Then… nothing.

Not good.

He didn't have his P-90 anymore, nor his pistol or his knife or his radio or anything that was on his belt or in his pack.

Definitely not good.

He debated whether or not to call out and then gave a tentative shout. There was nothing but silence in reply.

From the way his body felt and the way he'd woke, he could logically assume he'd been dumped from the same chute that had created the pile. He approached it again and began digging through it. Maybe he was just the first to wake. Maybe the rest of his team was buried or hurt or… dead. He ignored the tight feeling that thought brought to his chest.

He found his pack all the way on the other side of the pile. It sat alone on the ground, opened and the contents strewn close by. He thought the resident bum must have gone through it. Oddly, most of its contents seemed to be there. MRE's, rain gear, MOPP suit, flashlight, medkit, his canteens, the small emergency kit he'd put together. A little further around the pile, and he found his zat.

His heart climbed up into his mouth when he found Daniel's jacket and then Carter's pack. Carter carried their "odds-and-ends" box, a small kit they'd built together as a team over time. Most platoons had carried one in Vietnam and later in Iraq. It held incidentals that had proven useful in the past and might prove useful again: extra glasses for Daniel, needles and thread, batteries, a razor blade, a precision toolkit, various small parts for the P-90's and their pistols, shoelaces, wax, fuses, a magnet. Carter called it their "MacGyver Kit". It was one of their most valued possessions as a team.

It was enough to tell him that the rest of SG-1 was not in this area. He was in an enclosed yard. Evidently a dumping place for whoever lived here.

Further exploration revealed several ways out of the junkyard. He peered warily outside and felt a cold lump settle in his gut. There were narrow streets and long, rounded, rectangular buildings. Everything was made of that same dark metal. The ground seemed to vibrate beneath him sometimes, and he heard a continuous low drone, as if this were one big beehive. Ominous.

There was not one person to be seen. It was nearly dark. The streets were shadowed and still.

He dragged the gear he'd found out of the junkyard and into a sort of maintenance alley between the yard and the huge building. He hid both packs and the jacket behind a humming box of metal that seemed warm to the touch. He took his zat and went exploring.

He didn't go far. The buildings all looked the same; the streets were so similar that he found himself growing confused. He hadn't found his compass, and there were no specific landmarks to navigate by other than the big circular building next to the junkyard. When he glanced up, he saw only a strange darkness, no stars. This made him pause. He'd lost his watch, but he was sure that several hours had passed since he'd looked out across the city for the first time. He'd thought it was growing dark then, but now he wasn't so sure. It had grown neither darker nor lighter since he'd set out. The streets stayed shadowed but light enough for him to make his way.

"The hell?" He muttered to himself, glancing upward again. It was then that he could see the faint glow to the black sky. As if something burned behind it. Was he in a dome of some sort? He felt wind on his skin, but if the dome was big enough…

He made his way back to the junkyard and his hidden gear. The entire time, he didn't see another living soul. He didn't hear anything but that constant hum and the occasional light scrape of metal on metal. All of the buildings were cool to the touch, and the metal felt strange. It wasn't finished the way the steel on Earth was. It felt thick and somehow soft, as if he could dig into it with the tip of his knife and carve his initials. It sucked the warmth from his hand when he touched it. Heat resistant.

He'd grown more nervous then. He didn't like the industrial flavor of this city. Machines didn't sit well with him. He had Carter to deal with those for him, Daniel to tell him how to deal with the humans, Teal'c to watch their backs and pick up what the rest of them missed. Jack felt a bit naked without them.

The city did eventually grow darker. There were no streetlights or any other sort of illumination for navigation at night, and without the stars it was nearly pitch black. He dragged his gear into an isolated and protected corner of the alley and bedded down. Tomorrow he'd have to decide on a plan. Tonight he'd save his resources and listen to the city and see what happened. He wanted his missing team back.

The temperature dropped much more than he'd expected. The blackness was disorienting and disturbing. He'd been few places in his lifetime where there'd been no light at all. His body still ached from being thrown onto the junk pile. When he eased fingers over the top of his shoulder, he felt the bruising there. He pressed his back to the building's wall and rested his head on Carter's pack. Daniel's jacket worked well as a blanket. And if he took a little comfort in the familiar scents entwined into the fabrics, well, no one ever had to know.

\+ + +

The next morning- or at least he thought it was morning since it had grown less dark again- he renewed his search of the junkyard. He found one more zat and Carter's jacket with a ball of clothing zipped up inside of it. Inspection revealed it to be the rest of both Carter's and Daniel's BDU's and Carter's boots. It scared him.

He didn't find Daniel's or Teal'c's packs, nor did he find Teal'c's staff weapon or any of their weapons beyond the zats. He found two more canteens that were marked with Carter's name, and then he found Daniel's boots. He found one radio that made his heart race in anticipation, but no one answered his call.

\+ + +

That afternoon, he saw the lone- so far as he could tell- human occupant of the city again. The bearded man wore an odd-looking, long green coat and stood quite a ways down one of the streets and watched him. When Jack called to him, the man stepped out of sight. When Jack went to investigate, he found the man gone and no sign of him left to follow. Jack left a power bar sitting on the big humming box there. They seemed to be placed on every corner and reminded him of the electrical transformers on Earth. Hopefully the guy would want more and be willing to trade information for food. If not… maybe he could be convinced to talk in other ways.

They'd try the friendship route first. If that failed, well… Jack had never been afraid to make enemies.

\+ + +

**[ non-conformist ]**

The circular building next to the junkyard seemed to be bigger than the others. While most of the buildings were several stories high but long and narrow, often running for several blocks, the building next to the junkyard was tall and cylindrical. It rose many of dozens stories in the air, and it took Jack nearly an hour to walk around its circumference. He could see indentations in the metal where doors were placed, some quite large, but no amount of prying or pushing seemed to budge them. He found no hidden latches or buttons either.

This building was the key. He was sure of it. This was the logical place to start looking for his team. Something or someone had to live there. Whoever was inside had thrown him out along with his team's gear. The building hummed louder than the rest, and when he put his hands against it, it vibrated beneath them. There was always a cool wind sweeping down the streets around it.

Access was obvious. He'd have to climb back up into the garbage chute when it opened to expel debris. He needed more gear though. He was relieved beyond measure to have the zats, but this planet made him uneasy in the same way the Replicators unnerved him. Maybe they'd thrown the zats away because they were useless weapons here.

While he combed through the odds and ends in the junk pile, hoping to find some rope, he looked up to find the bearded man standing at one of the entrances to the junkyard. Jack stood slowly, watching him. The man took a step back. From his clothing and the wary way he kept returning to this place, Jack deduced that the man probably survived off of what he scavenged here each day. Jack's presence was interrupting the man's ability to make a living.

"Hey," Jack called gently. He forced himself to stay where he was and not dive after the man. The man simply watched him, but his feet shuffled nervously. Jack slowly drew a power bar from his pocket. He held it up. The man stared at it. "I just want to talk to you. You can have this if you answer some questions."

He had no doubt the man understood. The guy had spoken perfect English to Jack while trying to rob him of his clothing.

The man licked his lips and glanced around before answering. "Throw it to me, and I will answer you."

Jack gave a snort and narrowed his eyes. "I, ah, no, I don't think so. You talk to me, and then I'll throw it to you."

The man wavered. He looked very nervous and kept glancing behind himself. He must have liked the last bar though because he finally motioned at Jack to continue.

Jack proceeded carefully. "What's your name?"

"I am a bit."

Jack stared at him. "You're… what are you?"

"Bit."

"Bit," Jack repeated, brows furrowed. Oh-kaaaay. Jesus, he'd give his left eye for Carter and Daniel right now… The man nodded in certainty though. "All right," Jack sighed.

Jack pointed up at the chute. "What's up there, Bit?"

Bit looked at Jack as if he were brainless. "The recycling port."

Jack tried again. He pointed to the big, circular building. "And there?"

Bit didn't even glance to where he was pointing. "The system."

"The system?"

Bit remained silent and didn't react. Apparently he'd given his answer and he felt no need to elaborate.

Jack hesitated for a moment, thinking. Then, "What's an Interceptor?"

The man's eyes widened a bit. He chewed his lip nervously. He balked.

Jack tried again with more Colonel in his voice. "What's an Interceptor?"

"You aren't from here. You're a crawler."

"What's a crawler?"

"A bug. Why haven't the Interceptors quarantined you yet?"

"I'm sneaky," Jack answered grimly. He pointed to the circular building again. "How do I get in?"

Bit looked sad. "There is no going back." He fidgeted and started backing away. When a creak came from the chute above, he turned to run.

"Hey!" Jack called. Bit glanced back, and Jack threw him the power bar. Bit scooped it up and ran.

Jack stood back and watched the debris rain down onto the pile. As creepy as the city was with its dark days and its deserted streets and its disquieting, warm, humming heartbeat, he had a feeling that going inside would be even more disturbing. He had a very real suspicion that going in meant very likely not coming out again.

Something snaked out toward him from the hail of garbage and landed next to his boot. He tensed and then relaxed and stared down at the length of thick cord at his feet.

But inside he would go… and he wasn't coming out again unless he had SG-1 in tow. Or they threw his dead body down this chute and into this pile. In that case, maybe Bit would find something useful.

\+ + +

The cord turned out to be wire. Similar to the type used on electronics on Earth. Small strands were braided together to make bigger strands. The bigger strands were braided together and then sheathed in rubber. It was quite strong, but stiff and unwieldy, and tying it around anything was out of the question.

Jack used the razor blade from the odds and ends kit to slit open the rubber and reveal a few feet of wire. It was easy, if slightly time consuming, to find a piece of broken and bent metal that would work as a giant hook. He twisted the braids of wire together through his improvised hook and discovered to his surprise that the stiff wire made aiming the climbing device much easier.

He tucked the packs away in the alley, keeping only the two zats, one canteen, his flashlight, the GDO and a swiss army knife he'd found in the bottom of Carter's pack. Ideally, he'd go in there, find the rest of the team, and they'd find the gate and go home. At the worst, well… there was no need to go there just yet. He hid the packs just in case they'd need them again.

\+ + +

He didn't get into the chute until the next morning. Garbage was dumped several times a day, but he'd had to stand under the stream of debris and look up into it to find a spot to hook his wire. He had a few minutes or so at the end of each dump to make an attempt at securing the wire and then climbing up.

Standing at the top of the pile improved his chances greatly as long as he wasn't pelted with anything too big.

It took a few tries, including one rather heart-stopping fall back onto the hill of junk that made his shoulder scream in agony, but he finally found himself clinging to the side of the chute on his cord as bits of metal and plastic fell down around him. The chute was lit, and he could see where several smaller chutes emptied into this final, larger one. He also saw a very human-sized access door above him and to the left, a short ladder just below it for use in maintenance.

The lip of the chute, which held his hook, also held his weight like it was nothing. He eased across it to the ladder, dragging the hook with him until it was positioned right beneath the door. He grabbed the ladder and stepped onto its rungs, climbing up to the door. It didn't budge as he pushed at it, until he tried to slide it sideways. Then it rolled left and revealed a narrow tunnel.

He had to hunch a bit in the tunnel to keep from hitting his head. The lighting was stark and scarce, but it was more than enough to walk carefully and quietly. In here, the hum was more noticeable. Not so much louder as more prevalent. He could feel it in his chest and in his head the way you felt the bass when you stood next to the speakers while watching a band play live. The walls were smooth and shiny and a light color. When he put a hand against them, they felt cool to the touch and purred beneath his palm.

He tried not to touch them too much.

At the end of the tunnel there was a short ladder mounted on the wall leading up through a hatch in the ceiling. He peered upwards, zat ready, but couldn't see or hear anything. He eased up a few steps and poked his head tentatively through the hatch. He looked into a large, empty room. He heard a sound from one end, and when he glanced over, a human being in a puffy, white, static guard suit, complete with a hood, came through a door and stood at a control panel imbedded into the wall. Jack glanced around, but there didn't seem to be anybody else in the vicinity.

The human pulled a lever in the wall, and the distinct sound of metal scraping on metal came from the direction of the garbage chute. When lights flashed green on the control panel, the figure turned toward Jack. Jack quickly ducked down below the floor again.

He held the zat ready as footsteps approached the hatch. The figure passed by without a word or even a glance. Jack watched the feet walk by, and then he popped back up to study the figure's back. The walk was familiar…

Jack hauled himself up and out of the hatch, kneeling on the floor beside it. "Daniel?"

The figure seemed to jerk upright a bit at the sound, and his head turned revealing Daniel's profile. Then he recovered and simply walked on. Jack frowned. He felt elation at finding one of the members of SG-1 so quickly, but…

He rose quickly and jogged after Daniel. Brief glances behind him told him they were alone. He grabbed Daniel's shoulder. "Daniel!"

Daniel turned easily in his hands, but his eyes only scanned Jack's face briefly before he simply walked away.

"Okay. That's a little zombie-like," Jack muttered, going after him again. This time, when he grabbed for Daniel's arm, Daniel simply sidestepped and walked on. "Daniel, goddamn it… " Jack grabbed his shoulder. Daniel let that shoulder dip down, never breaking stride, and slid out of his grasp. He never looked Jack in the face, nor did he make a sound. It was really creeping Jack out.

He finally stepped in front of Daniel and grabbed him by both shoulders. "Daniel, STOP!"

Daniel stopped. He stood motionless in Jack's arms, blue eyes locked on a place on Jack's chest. Jack didn't like the vapid expression on his face. "What the hell's the matter with you? Remember me? Jack?"

Daniel stared at his chest and gave no indication he heard or understood. Only his chest moved with the gentle heave of his breath. So he wasn't a zombie at least… There was a slight glow coming from under the white hood on Daniel's head, and Jack reached up and shoved the hood off. There was a thin band of metal running over Daniel's head from temple to temple, faint glowing lights on each end. Jack prodded it with one finger. It stuck fast. He tried to gently pry it up. Daniel grimaced. He let go.

"Great." Jack glanced around and tried to decide what to do here. He let go of Daniel's shoulders and Daniel immediately stepped around him and began walking down the corridor again. "Daniel… " Jack called, frustrated. He realized he had no choice. It was either take Daniel back by force or let him go. And the latter was not an option.

Jack zatted him.

The blue beam swirled around Daniel's white suit. Daniel gave a soft grunt and sank to the floor. Jack walked up and knelt by his side. The lights on the head device Daniel was wearing were out now. He pressed his fingers to Daniel's pulse, just to be sure, and then stuck the zat in his belt. He tentatively touched the device, and it slid back easily over Daniel's hair. Jack ripped it off and tossed it aside. He wrapped his arms around Daniel's chest from behind and dragged him toward the hatch in the floor. The floor was the same shiny, smooth material as the walls, and made it made the younger, heavier man blissfully easy to drag.

He had a more difficult time easing Daniel's body down the short ladder, and his knee hollered bloody hell, but finally he had Daniel lying out of sight in the small tunnel.

"Daniel," he urged, grabbing his chin and shaking it to try and wake him up. Daniel blinked rapidly and this time his eyes focused on Jack. His brows drew together in such a familiar expression that Jack nearly grinned. "You here with me?" Jack asked.

Daniel blinked and seemed to want to fall asleep again.

Jack shook him a bit. "Daniel!" he said sharply, drawing the blue eyes back to his. "Where's Carter?"

Daniel stared at him, confused.

"Teal'c? Where's Teal'c?"

More confusion. He was starting to pass out again. Jack took a deep breath and studied him. "The Jaffa? Where's the Jaffa?"

Daniel's eyes widened at that, even as they started to close. "Jaffa was quarantined… "

"Where is the quarantine area?"

Daniel's eyes closed and didn't open. Jack felt him go limp. He checked Daniel's pulse again. Strong and steady. He sat there for a moment debating with himself. He could pull Daniel out of here now, take him back to the alley and hope he recovered. Then they could both come back for Carter and Teal'c. Or he could leave Daniel here for a while and try and find the other two on his own. He wasn't sure if his intrusion had been noticed yet or not. So far there'd been no alarms or people shooting at him, which was good. He should press his advantage while he had it. It might not come again. On the other hand, he had no idea where he was going in here.

He glanced down at Daniel, considering. Finally, he stood. "A few more minutes, okay? If I don't find anything, I'll come back and take you out of here."

He climbed back up through the hatch, glancing back down to make sure Daniel was out of sight.

He walked silently down the corridor, listening intently. He didn't hear any sounds of human life. Eventually he reached an intersection, and he glanced warily in each direction. They all seemed alike. Nothing stood out in any direction. There were no signs or anything with which to direct himself. He blew a frustrated breath between his lips and ran a hand through his hair. He stuffed a hand into the front pocket of his trousers. At the very bottom tip of the pocket, he felt several coins. He pulled them up and glanced at them. Four pennies and a dime. He squatted down and laid one of the pennies up tight against the wall of the corridor that led back to Daniel and the garbage chute.

Zat up, he ventured left down the intersecting hallway.

\+ + +

**[ rust ]**

The corridors were all long and empty and void of doors or windows or any sort of markings. They were all an off-white, garish hue that was smooth and shiny and cool. Creepy to the extreme. Jack would have rather been searching for his team in a jungle full of snakes and starving tigers.

He'd used up 3 of the pennies when the corridor he was in suddenly turned right and opened up into a small room. He saw white-suited people moving around and working over tables of equipment. He eased forward, trying to see their faces. They were silent and didn't talk or cough or make any sort of noise. They stood at their tables and worked on what looked like computer or electronic equipment. When one of them suddenly looked up and straight at Jack, he froze, finger tapping the trigger of his zat. The worker looked away again without a word and nothing happened.

Jack chewed at his lip, thinking about this. Daniel had acted the same way. It was as if he hadn't seen Jack at all until Jack had interfered with him and made him stop.

Jack conducted an experiment and stepped out into the middle of the hall. He walked slowly into the room. A few workers glanced up, seemingly momentarily disturbed, but then they all returned to work. No alarms. No yelling, no screaming, no shooting.

It sent a prickle along the back of his neck. The Replicators were the same way. They ignored you as long as you weren't a threat, but bump the wrong one and suddenly they swarmed.

He eased his way into their midst, searching the faces. Carter wasn't here.

A man with vacant eyes walked past him and out of the room. Jack hurried to follow. They walked a long way down a corridor, bypassing any intersecting hallways. When they reached the end, the man stepped onto an elevator, and Jack let the doors close before he got there. He didn't want to press his luck. There were no call buttons of any sort, so he stood there until the doors opened again. The elevator was empty. He turned and laid his last penny right along the edge of the doorway.

When he stepped in, the doors shushed closed behind him. He glanced around the unit. It didn't feel like he was moving. He saw a faint outline in the wall of the car, and he studied it. There were several small indentations with holes in them. They looked like some sort of electrical plugs. When he touched the outline, a small panel opened. And finally… some buttons!

They were old and cracked, and grime was caked around their edges. A thick layer of dust covered everything, and it was in stark contrast to the white, eerily clean walls of the elevator. It hadn't been disturbed in a very long while. It would have taken a long time to get that much dust in a place that was basically enclosed and protected.

Jack scanned the lettering. Numbers, letters, a few specifics like: SHELTER, MEDICAL, TESTING, and… Jack's heart skipped… QUARANTINE. Seriously? It was going to be that easy?

He hit the button, and he felt the slightest ripple as the elevator began to move. He suddenly began to think that maybe walking directly into Quarantine wasn't such a good idea. If there were any non-zombie-ish type humans or robots around, it was very likely that they'd be involved in security. He took the second zat from his belt and held them both ready, facing the door.

It did him no good since when the car gave a small jerk and stopped, the door he hadn't seen that was set into the wall behind him opened instead. He whirled around, surprised, fingers already squeezing on the triggers of the zats.

No one was there.

It was very dark.

He stepped out of the elevator and stood there. The doors shut behind him again, taking away what little light he'd had. A moist, clammy, cold settled against his skin. He heard water running somewhere, hitting stones. When he clicked his flashlight on, he aimed it toward the walls. They were gray stone, crumbling but thick. In a few long, deep cracks, green algae grew.

There were old light fixtures on the ceiling, but a brief search found no switches to turn them on. The room he had stepped into was abandoned. And not recently. Tables and chairs sat awkwardly on broken legs, covered in dust. His feet shuffled through disintegrating paper and powdery dirt.

It was a small and enclosed area. Only one lowly and dark corridor led off from the main room. He aimed his flashlight down it and crept forward.

There were metal bars embedded into the stone. They were broken and bent and had once separated the long hallway into different segments. When he stepped through the first set, he began to see doors in the walls. Metal doors molded to the stone, covered in steel bars. In some, the stone had given way and the doors leaned perilously away from their hinges, or they had just fallen down instead.

He took the time to aim the light into each cell. Most were empty. Some held bones. He saw a few human skulls. A few skeletons that looked anything but human as well.

The far end of the cellblock seemed to have faired better than the rest. It was newer and the stones were filled in with some sort of cement. Metal girders supported the ceiling. There were few cells here, all of them closed and dark and silent. When he shone his light into one, something moved. The barred window was small and he couldn't get a good angle. He tried to move the light around and identify what he was seeing, but it was difficult.

"Hey!" he whispered loudly.

There was a soft noise in return. Jack thought he heard a whisper-thin, "O'Neill".

He pulled back and slid the light around the outside of the door, looking for a way in. The bars across it were thick and sat neatly in snug cavities carved into the stone just to hold them. He had to walk back down the hall scanning the wall with the flashlight until he found a lever. He breathed a sigh of relief that was short-lived when he attempted to move the lever and found it stuck fast. He kicked at it. Nothing.

He swore under his breath and tramped back up the corridor to the main room, looking through the debris there for anything useful. He found a mostly intact table leg and returned to give the stubborn lever a good whack. He swung it against the lever and the wooden leg broke with a loud _crack_. Splinters spun off into the darkness.

Jack gave a growl of anger and kicked the lever again. It didn't budge. In a rather insane moment, he felt like yelling at the building itself to give Teal'c up or face the wrath of Earth. It would have been stupid and untrue since if Hammond could have helped them, he would have by now. They'd missed every single one of their check-in calls with the SGC.

He pulled out one of the zats and fired at the lever. There was a crackling sound and the lever suddenly drooped a few inches. Jack stared at it with renewed vigor and stuffed the zat back into his belt. He tapped the lever first, testing for any nasty surprises that the zat's beam might have set into motion. It was cold and dead, so he pulled on it. It grudgingly gave way, and the bars across all the doors on that side of that corridor slid back.

He hurried back to the occupied cell. The door pulled open easily, and Jack aimed his flashlight ahead as he entered warily. He heard movement from the corner and swung his flashlight in that direction. There was a body moving there on the floor, and suddenly his beam centered on something familiar. A SGC arm patch.

"Teal'c?" He moved the light upward, catching the glint of a gold symbol on a dark forehead. Dark eyes squinted into the light, and Jack shifted it slightly so it was less blinding.

"O'Neill," Teal'c said conversationally, as if Jack had just stopped in for tea on a Sunday afternoon. His voice was scratchy and weak though, and when he held an arm up against Jack's light, it trembled.

Jack went down hard on his knees next to the Jaffa. "Teal'c! For cryin' out loud… " Jack had to grab Teal'c and steady him as he started to lean over.

"Water," Teal'c said.

Jack pulled his canteen from the back of his belt and unscrewed the cap. He lifted it to Teal'c's mouth and let him drink. Teal'c drank greedily and his big hand closed around Jack's and tried to tip it further. Jack pulled the canteen out of his grip carefully. "Not too much. Let your system absorb it." He rested back on his heels and squeezed Teal'c's shoulder warmly. "You're a sight for sore eyes."

"As are you, O'Neill," Teal'c replied. He seemed to have no energy to smile, but his dark eyes glinted in relief.

"And you're not a zombie either. That's good. Very good."

Teal'c managed to raise his eyebrow. Jack lifted the canteen and let him have a little more water. "I found Daniel on my way here." He explained the rest briefly, omitting the details.

Teal'c listened and leaned back against the stone wall with a troubled expression. "I woke here and have not seen nor heard another living being until this moment."

Jack took the canteen back. "No food or water?"

"None."

Jack sighed. "I don't suppose you know where Carter is then?"

"I do not, O'Neill." Teal'c's voice softened.

"All right, well, we'll find her."

"Indeed."

"How about the stargate?"

"I do not know."

Jack nodded and took a deep breath. "Can you get up now?"

"I will try."

Jack hooked his canteen back onto his belt and looped an arm across Teal'c's back, pulling him upward. Teal'c slowly stood, his legs a bit unsteady, his arm clutching Jack's shoulder heavily.

"We've got a ways to go, T. We'll stop to rest, but I don't know how much longer they're going to let me walk around in here without doing something about it."

Teal'c grunted in reply, and they stepped out of the cell. Jack had to support him to a great degree, and they lumbered slowly down the hall. When they reached the elevator, Jack propped Teal'c up in the corner and then discovered his next problem. He had no idea what level he'd been on when he first entered the elevator to come down. The buttons hadn't been lit and there'd been no screen to tell riders what level they were currently at.

He sighed and pushed the lowest number. The elevator began moving. He turned back and considered Teal'c. He'd have to take Teal'c and Daniel and get out of here. They'd have to come back for Carter when Teal'c was in better shape. If he found Sam and she was in bad straights, or he had to zat her, there'd be no way he could get all three of them out by himself. He had a feeling from all he'd seen so far that Carter would likely not be as easy to find. If they had a way to brainwash people, and they had any knowledge at all of what Carter's mind was capable of, then she'd be held in a much more secure location.

The doors opened, and Jack glanced down for the penny. Nope. He hit the next number.

Nine numbers later, he spied the penny and shuffled his arm under Teal'c's again to help him out into the corridor. He picked up the penny.

Teal'c seemed to get a bit stronger as they walked. Jack stopped twice to let him take a long drink from the canteen. As Jack picked up his last penny, he heard a loud rumbling. It rose in pitch and volume until it seemed to be a painful whine. The building vibrated with it, and as they made their way down the last long corridor and toward the recycling chute control room, there was a soft shuffling behind them. Jack glanced back to see people in white suits moving quickly across the intersecting hallways in the distance.

"What is happening?" Teal'c asked.

"I think they know we're here," Jack said tightly. He stepped up their pace, grabbing the arm Teal'c had slung across his shoulder in one hand and his belt in the other. Teal'c moved his legs stubbornly, but Jack still half-dragged him. "T, I left Daniel unconscious. I had to zat him to keep him from walking away. I'm going to need you to walk or I'll have to leave one of you behind and come back for you."

Teal'c's voice was quiet and determined. "I will walk."

Jack glanced behind them, but no one pursued them. He helped Teal'c ease through the hatch and onto the ladder by sitting on the edge and bracing his feet against the opposite edge while Teal'c climbed down. When he'd landed safely on the floor and confirmed that Daniel was still lying where Jack had left him, Jack stood and jogged over to the control panel at the far end of the room. He jerked the lever down that Daniel had moved earlier. There was a grating sound of metal on metal. Jack raced back and jumped down through the hatch.

Daniel was moving but out of it. Far more out of it than a simple zatting would have created. He didn't seem to know where he was or who he was, or even how to move his own body. Jack hauled him up, pulling him along the same way he'd dragged Teal'c. T walked disjointedly behind them, arm braced on the wall to direct him and keep him balanced.

The whine was still there. It hadn't changed any further in pitch or intensity. Maybe that was a good sign. Maybe it was something normal, and they hadn't been found out at all. He wasn't going to bet on his luck right now though.

Daniel muttered nonsensically as they made their way through the narrow tunnel. Jack hoped there wasn't more to opening the garbage chute than the lever or they'd be royally screwed.

The chute was open. He sent Teal'c down first. His shoulders screamed under the strain of trying to ease the Jaffa down to where the cord waited. Teal'c's arms quivered as he tried to lower himself down the rope. He gave up half way down and let go, falling onto his back on top of the junk heap. Jack stared down anxiously until Teal'c got to his knees and looked back up at him.

He pulled Daniel to the edge and eased them both down to the ladder. Daniel moved by himself, but only sporadically. Jack wished he had some rope to tie around Daniel's chest. He was sure he was going to drop Daniel as soon as their weight left the ladder. Teal'c stood below, directly beneath them. Jack didn't think he'd have the strength to catch someone Daniel's size and weight, but they'd have to go with it.

As he started to swing around and grab the rope with his legs, Daniel suddenly gasped and tightened his hold on Jack's shoulders. It helped. Jack lowered them; air tight in his lungs, pain blossoming along his biceps and his shoulders, until he felt Teal'c tap his boot. He felt Daniel tugged from his grasp, and he let go, falling onto his ass and sliding down the side of the heap a little ways.

When he looked back up, Teal'c was sliding down beside him, Daniel under his arm. Jack pulled Daniel up, and Teal'c helped him drag the archeologist toward one of the doorways.

"Where are we, O'Neill?" Teal'c's voice was still scratchy but sounded stronger.

"The creepy city outside of the creepy building," Jack answered in clipped tones. Teal'c fell silent.

When they reached the street, Jack glanced around. "I found some of our gear and stashed it over there." He jerked his head toward the alley to their right. "We're going to have to find a place to hunker down for a while. I'll come back for the gear."

But even as they started into the street, there was an unusual sound from a distance. Jack stopped them in the middle of the narrow road and cocked his head, listening. "What the hell is that?"

It was a low, uneven rumbling that sounded like a fleet of Humvees coming toward them. It surprised Jack for a moment, until he heard the unmistakable squeal of heavy air brakes.

Teal'c glanced at him. "I do not like this."

Jack nodded. "Me either. Let's go. Back there."

They turned around and headed for the alley. The packs were stowed exactly where Jack had spent the past two nights, tucked away in an obscure corner of the architecture and shielded by the square bulk of a humming energy transformer. They lowered Daniel to the ground next to the packs, and Jack drew the two zats. He handed one to Teal'c. "Stay with Daniel. I'm going to take a look."

"Be careful, O'Neill." It was not a request. It was a Jaffa order.

Jack nodded absently, and readied his zat, creeping up to the street again. He could still hear the rumbling, but nothing was in sight yet. He'd been in the building longer than he thought. The disorienting, black night that came to this city was creeping up quickly. He suspected the days on this planet were shorter than on Earth, but it was hard to tell without a watch. He had time to miss Carter who would have blinked at him and shrugged and then built him a sundial or some other sort of time-keeping device, and he'd have known how long the days were down to the tenth of a second by dinnertime.

Who the hell were these people? Were they even people?

He jogged toward the noise, and when he reached the end of the block, he plastered himself up against the wall of the building there. He peered around the corner and looked down the street. At first he didn't see anything, but then… He saw lights in the distance. Red beams moving back and forth across the road and over the buildings. Jack watched them for a while. They moved slowly and came minutely closer as time passed.

He didn't dare move any closer for a better look, so he waited. The street he stood on remained empty and mostly silent. Eventually, he made out a line of vehicles coming down the road. Trucks with heavy engines and big wheels and large beds in the back for cargo. Troop carriers. Something told him he'd just discovered the Interceptors.

Thin, dark, humanoid shapes moved around them. The red beams of light were coming from helmets they wore. It looked like some sort of night vision technology, and Jack's mouth ran dry. As the convoy reached an intersection, two of the trucks split off and turned down the perpendicular streets. A group of the humans went with them. A man that stayed with the convoy motioned up the street in Jack's general direction, and they started forward again.

There were two more intersections before the street that Jack stood on, but he'd seen enough. More trucks would branch off at those intersections, and the red beams would hit everything. They were searching for something. Someone.

Probably an escaped prisoner and an abducted zombie.

Jack hurried back to Teal'c and Daniel. Teal'c sat with his back against a building wall, zat resting on his knee, canteen between his legs. His eyes glinted at Jack in the growing darkness. "What is it?" He demanded.

"Convoy of troops. The soldiers have these helmets with weird red beams they're aiming everywhere."

"Thermal imaging?" Teal'c looked concerned.

"Don't know, but there's no way we're getting out of here without being seen. Not with Daniel unconscious and you barely able to walk."

Teal'c started to protest, but Jack shushed him with a waving hand. He glanced around at the building's walls and then laid a hand on the energy transformer that hid them from view of the street. It wasn't a bad hideout really. He had to make a decision. Now.

"We stay here," he ordered. Teal'c looked alarmed, but Jack repeated the shushing motion and hunkered down, pulling their packs in tight behind the transformer along with them. "If it is thermal imaging, this transformer… thing, will mask our body heat. It's almost hot to the touch. The rest of the buildings are covered in some strange sort of metal. I think it's heat resistant. Unless they walk right up on us, I don't think they'll see us. We're tucked away in a corner, but it's still sort of out in the open. Maybe they won't waste the time."

Teal'c looked doubtful, but he nodded his agreement that there was little option for anything else. "Very well." He slid over and helped Jack push their packs up against the wall that formed the end of the alley. They pulled Daniel in to lie between them. They rested with their backs against the transformer and their feet against the packs.

They could hear the distinct sound of the trucks clearly now. There was no sound of humans talking. No shouts or orders or soldiers running. Just silence and the occasional sound of a truck braking.

Between them, Daniel fidgeted and let out a low moan. Jack gritted his teeth in the dark and pulled Daniel up against him so Daniel rested against his side. Jack slid an arm around his shoulders, ready to clamp a hand over the unconscious man's mouth if he started making noise. Daniel's head drooped down against his chest.

Teal'c froze. "O'Neill."

Jack jerked his head up at Teal'c's warning tone. In the darkness he saw it. It had been hidden before by the light in the building, and because he hadn't been looking. But now he saw it clearly.

A small red light glowed beneath Daniel's skin at the base of his skull. Jack stared at it. He glanced up at Teal'c. Teal'c returned the worried stare.

"Tracking device?" Teal'c asked quietly.

"Possibly." Jack poked at the light with his index finger. It moved along with the skin on Daniel's nape. "Looks like it's only skin deep."

The light flickered and then started a steady pulsing.

"I do not think that is good," Teal'c said.

"Shit," Jack swore with a violent whisper and nudged Daniel into Teal'c's arms. "Hold him, Teal'c." The brawny arms closed around Daniel, and one hand wrapped around his head.

Jack dug the swiss army knife out of his pocket and flipped up the smallest blade. It was shiny, even in the darkness, and had a fine, sharp edge to it. Thank God for Carter's neurotic cleanliness and order concerning her weapons.

"Are you going to attempt to cut it out?" Teal'c asked.

"Yeah." Jack got on his knees awkwardly, trying to keep his head down and shielded by the transformer. He turned toward Teal'c and Daniel and sat on his heels.

"You could injure Daniel Jackson severely," Teal'c pointed out, but he pressed the side of Daniel's head to his chest and held it tightly, his other arm wrapping around Daniel's back and arms to hold him steady.

Jack took an uneasy breath and shot Teal'c an irritated glance. "I know… "

Teal'c nodded.

Jack brought the knife up and considered the blinking light. It was about the size of a dime and looked to be embedded just under the skin. Hopefully it didn't have any extra wiring that ran deep into Daniel's brain. Jack really didn't relish the idea of giving Daniel a lobotomy. The archeologist could be difficult and demanding and geeky to a fault, but Jack had grown rather used to hearing Daniel's voice in his head when he faced a difficult decision. He'd never admit it to anyone, but he rather enjoyed their sparring. When the fate of the Earth wasn't resting on the outcome that was.

He slid the sharp tip of the knife into Daniel's skin at the edge of the light. A dark speck of blood sprang up and Daniel's body stiffened. Teal'c held him tighter. Jack sliced quickly across the width of the light and then tried to prod the light through the small incision. When that didn't work, and Daniel gave a grunt, he cut up from the corner of the incision to make an 'L'. He used the knife tip to lift the flap of skin, and there was a small, clear, square chip, flashing red. Jack used his thumb to hold the flap of skin and used the tip of the knife to pry at the corner of the chip. It came up easily and fell off Daniel's skin and onto Jack's leg.

"Ehh," Jack grimaced.

"Take it," Teal'c ordered. "I will take care of Daniel Jackson."

"Bit bossy when you're hungry, aren't you?" Jack lifted a brow, but he wiped the knife quickly on his sleeve and closed it, sliding it into his jacket pocket. He picked up the chip and the flashlight and gave a quick glance over the top of the transformer. No one there yet. He slipped away down the alley.

\+ + +

_Teal'c_

Teal'c tried to open the nearest pack without letting go of Daniel. Daniel still moved restlessly, and Teal'c feared he'd alert the beings searching for them. Even sitting, Teal'c's legs complained and trembled a bit from their forced march out of his prison. It wasn't something he was used to, and he pushed down a wish for O'Neill to return quickly. He was a Jaffa. He could handle such things as this.

The medkit was at the top of O'Neill's pack, and he fumbled it open, pulling out a bandage and an antiseptic wipe in a foil packet. Daniel seemed to settle back down again, and Teal'c quickly tried to bandage his neck in the darkness.

He took another long drink from the canteen when he was finished. Hunger had come and gone back in the cell, but the thirst had grown and driven him nearly crazy. Kel-no-reem had helped, and it had allowed his body to use its scarce resources at a much slower pace, but still he and his symbiote weakened steadily.

But O'Neill had found him, and Teal'c could not help the burst of pride in his own good choice of friends. O'Neill would never let him down. Daniel Jackson would recover, and they _would_ find Major Carter. Teal'c had been a soldier longer than O'Neill had been alive. He knew the unpredictability of battle and of life. O'Neill had given him hope where once there was none, and when O'Neill said it was not over, well, it was not over.

The trucks were closer now. It sounded like they were on this street or very close. It was nearly black as pitch except for the ungodly reflection of the odd, smooth, dark metal of the buildings and the power transformer.

There was a scuffling sound and then O'Neill dropped roughly down on the other side of Daniel, breath hard in his lungs. Teal'c lowered the zat he'd jerked up in surprise.

"They are near," Teal'c stated, very quietly. He waited for O'Neill to confirm.

"Yeah," Jack confirmed. "Stay down and stay quiet."

"The chip?" Teal'c inquired.

"I took it back and threw it on the junk pile. Hopefully it's close enough that they'll think the signal was coming from there the whole time."

Teal'c nodded. It was good. O'Neill's strategy was sound.

A thin, red beam of light moved across the wall above them. They froze, crowding in toward Daniel to keep him encased between them, and then they held their breath and waited.

\+ + +

**[ mechanical law ]**

_Jack_

Neither he nor Teal'c slept that night. Jack wanted to tell him to kel-no-reem but didn't dare. He needed another set of senses and a steady zat hand. Well, T wasn't the most steady he'd ever been, but Jack would rather have a weakened Teal'c at his back than two Marines any day.

The thin, red beams of light swept the alley again and again. They could hear the trucks and the scuff of boots on the surface of the road. The Interceptors were apparently relying only on technology though, and not the eye of man. Technology could be fooled. So could man, but that was harder since men knew how other men thought. No one walked down the alley to physically check behind the power transformer. They remained unfound.

When the sounds became more distant, Jack pulled an MRE from his pack and handed it to Teal'c. Teal'c met his eyes over Daniel's sleeping body. "How much do we have, O'Neill?"

Jack grimaced a bit. "I've only found Carter's and my own pack so far. 11 MRE's. We're down to 2 canteens of water."

Teal'c's jaw tightened. He motioned at the plastic pouch. "Take your share first."

"This one's all yours. I had one yesterday. Come on… you need the calories."

Teal'c hesitated, but Jack put on his hard expression and Teal'c capitulated. "Very well." He took the pouch and the fork offered and began to eat. Jack felt better then. If they were going to have any chance of recovering Carter and getting off this miserable planet, they needed Teal'c at full strength.

Daniel looked healthy enough, except for the weird mumbling and unconsciousness. Jack managed to get some water down him during one of his semi-lucid moments. Jack was beginning to become concerned that he'd done permanent damage to Daniel when he'd zatted him.

"Teal'c. Can you hold on for a while without kel-no-reem, uh, -ing?"

"I can."

"Good. You're going to have to. When it gets light, I'm going to go find us a real place to hide. You'll need to watch Daniel."

"I understand."

Jack glanced at him with a deep breath. "I don't know what the hell we wandered into here, but we _are_ getting out. All of us."

Teal'c held his gaze for a few moments in silence before answering. "I believe you, O'Neill."

\+ + +

**[ lost grace ]**

Jack had found a place. Without a compass, he'd only wandered the streets where he could still see the big circular building and use it for navigation. Coming upon a street that was long and straight enough to obscure its end, he'd set out warily down its narrow confines.

Teal'c had still had his watch, so Jack had borrowed it for this mission. An hour later, he began to notice something interesting. The dark metal dropped away and suddenly there were old structures made of wood and stone, reminding him of the quarantine area that had held Teal'c. They were just as abandoned as the rest of the city, but were run down and showed evidence of battle damage. They were reminders of a former way of life within the cold, stark technology. Although there was still an eery lack of trees or plants or animals and insects, this section was not nearly as inhuman.

Until now, the city had been laid out on a flat plain. It had been eerily even and distinct in its pattern. Now, he stood at the bottom of a hill and looked up at a glorious, octagonal, stained glass window. It was a mass of small, colorful geometric shapes. The building could have been an old temple of some kind. It certainly had a church-like feel to it, but there were no spires or symbols or anything that called people to worship, other than the big window that looked down over the city.

Inside, it was vast but seemed smaller with the heaps of rubble and junk that moldered in the open. He walked toward the window, awed by its color and presence even though the dark nature of the planet precluded a truly brilliant display were the sun to shine through it.

There was evidence that others had stayed here. Fire circles were burnt black into the floor, long dead by the looks of them. The floor was filled with footprints leading to and fro. Jack called out once and heard nothing stirring.

Just beneath the window there was a loft. Stairs rose up on either side of it and were sturdy enough to hold him. When he reached the top he found a small, sunken alcove only slightly smaller than the briefing room at the SGC. Someone had dragged a table up the stairs and a large pallet made of wood and netting. Debris littered the floor and dust covered everything, but Jack suddenly felt relieved. He wondered how many of these deserted hideouts there actually were in the city.

A cursory exploration yielded another short staircase that led to the base of the window. A broken door led outside to a narrow balcony with short walls and carved stone that had likely been used for maintenance purposes on the big window. Standing on the balcony he could look out over the sunless industrial landscape and truly appreciate its horrifying scope. He couldn't see the ends of the city. A small section was his to study before it disappeared into obscurity at the edges. He could see the dark fog that covered the sky though. It hadn't been apparent when he was standing in the streets and being dwarfed by the black buildings, but now he could see the uneven colors where the sky seemed brighter in some areas. It also seemed very close, the way the sky did on spring mornings when the mist came down on Earth.

Again he wondered if the darkness was really a natural state of the planet or if it was instead a result of war or an accident or something more purposeful and sinister. He tried not to think about what they could be breathing into their lungs. There was nothing they could do about that anyway.

He took a brief tour of the rest of the place just to make sure there were no hidden surprises, and then went immediately back for Teal'c and Daniel.

Teal'c insisted on carrying the packs while Jack half-carried, half-dragged Daniel along with them. Even with Daniel's occasional wakeful periods where he would support his own weight and walk along with them, it took them several breaks and the rest of the day to reach the church. Jack had decided to call it a church because it seemed safer… and was just as logical as anything else.

They settled Daniel on the pallet in Carter's sleeping bag and then Jack sat down in the dust and put his head in his hands. The effort of the past few days had caught up with him, and he felt hopelessly lost.

"O'Neill." The low, quiet voice brought Jack's head up, and he looked into Teal'c's dark eyes.

Teal'c handed him a canteen. "Drink and then eat. Tomorrow we will have to look for food and water."

Jack was too tired to do anything but nod. He took the canteen and then the MRE that Teal'c cut open for him. Once he started eating, he found his appetite, and he devoured the cold chicken and rice. He only sipped at the water, trying to conserve it. Teal'c was right. This would all be for naught if they didn't at least find water soon. The thought weighed heavily on him, and he knew it was hitting him harder because he was so tired, but he couldn't do anything to stop it.

He laid in the dark on top of his own sleeping bag and stared at the meager reflections of light in the big window. Close by, Teal'c slipped into kel-no-reem, and Jack thought he should probably stay awake to keep watch. But the days crashed down on him and he slipped into a hazy state in-between sleep and wakefulness where he searched endlessly for Carter down halls that all looked the same; and Daniel woke from his long sleep with flashing eyes and a voice that was out of tune and wavered in its pitch.

It was the touch of Teal'c's hand on his shoulder that finally centered him and let him sink into sleep.

\+ + +

**[ temporal displacement ]**

_Daniel_

He was aware that something went wrong. He woke but couldn't open his eyes. The darkness kept coming back to claim him. Strange memories were a blur of images in his mind.

He really wanted to wake up. This dream was a nightmare. Bodies kept invading his dream. Sam, Jack, Teal'c, and people he didn't even know. He felt himself being moved, felt pain and nausea, and his throat was dry. It seemed to last forever.

He tried hard at one point, when his body felt as if it had been dragged behind a truck. He swam hard for the surface, lungs bursting, and finally his eyes opened. Into more darkness. He gasped.

A face hovered above him. He recognized the eyes.

"Jack?" His voice sounded so far away.

There was relief in Jack's eyes. "You're okay, Daniel."

Oh. So not dead. Not yet. Good. He couldn't prevent his eyes from closing again.

\+ + +

Daniel woke with a start. For a moment he was confused. He stared up at an arched ceiling filled with wooden rafters, and a strange light covered him. Knowledge and memory settled back down on him quietly and slowly. The gate and white walls and nightmares that had paralyzed him.

His head pounded. Suddenly his stomach lurched.

He sat up quickly, glancing around him. What, were they in a barn? Then he was looking down and there was an old basin there and he was dry heaving over the top of it. Footsteps approached.

His head swam, and his stomach started to bring some water up. The room spun, and he leaned perilously forward. Hands grabbed him, brought him back, held him steady until he stopped heaving, and he weakly spit the taste from his mouth. He was lowered gently back against the bed, and Daniel breathed in relief.

Jack sat on the edge of his bed. He nudged the basin away from them with the toe of his boot. Daniel heard it scrape against the floor.

"Sorry," Daniel said weakly.

"S'alright," Jack said in that soft voice that meant Daniel had been out for a while and there'd been no promise that he'd ever make it back. They'd all heard it before from their beds in the infirmary. "How do you feel?"

"Like crap."

Jack raised his eyebrows. "At least we have the old Daniel back again."

"What happened?"

He listened raptly as Jack told him what had happened to them all. He had a memory of going through the gate, but after that it became a jumble of flashing images. Even as Jack started putting the pieces into place though, some of his memories grew sharper, some expanded, some came out of hiding where they'd been lurking in his brain.

"I think it's some kind of… hive mind," he told Jack. He shook his head and swallowed. "I remember not having to think about anything. I had a job to do, and I just… knew… where I needed to go and what I needed to do."

"We took a chip out of your neck. We thought it was a tracking device."

Daniel raised a hand weakly to his throat. Jack lifted Daniel's head with one hand and then the other closed around Daniel's hand, leading it to his nape where he felt a bandage and a slight ache.

"Great." Daniel closed his eyes and sank back into the sleeping bag.

Jack gave him some water and then told him that Sam hadn't been recovered yet. Daniel said nothing and squeezed his eyes closed briefly. He wasn't sure he was ready to face the possibilities of Sam being gone. Jack lowered his head, fingers fiddling with a rip in the thigh of his BDU trousers. "We'll get her, Daniel. I just need you and Teal'c healthy first."

Even through the haze in his pounding head, Daniel could see the guilt in his posture. "You didn't leave her behind, Jack. You got us out. Now, we'll go back and find her."

"Get some sleep," Jack said, standing. Daniel realized the conversation was being summarily shut down. Same old Jack.

"Where's Teal'c?"

"We found water yesterday. We followed some footprints and then a path and found an old, broken water pipe coming up out of the ground. The water was still running. It looks clean but we're boiling it anyway. He's watching the fire downstairs. No trees." Jack smiled with humor. "We have to burn the furniture."

Daniel nodded and suddenly smelled the smoke.

Jack walked away, leaving him to settle back down and try and rest. It wasn't until Daniel was nearly asleep that he suddenly noticed the huge stained glass window that made up nearly an entire wall of the room they were in. When his eyes slid shut, he still saw the colors against his eyelids.

\+ + +

_Jack_

Daniel recovered more quickly than Teal'c. His body had been kept healthy, and it had only been his mind that had suffered a blow by being yanked out of the influence of the denizens of this world. The day after he woke for good, Jack fed him one of their MRE's. Teal'c had had several. He needed the calories and the nutrition. Both he and his symbiote grew stronger. Within a week though, they were down to two of the meals-ready-to-eat.

Jack finally tucked those last two away in the bottom of his pack. Daniel and Teal'c watched him without comment and then nodded when he glanced up. They had one more member of SG-1 to find, and there was no telling what shape she would be in. The last of the supplies would be saved for her.

Jack had ventured out into the surrounding area over the past few days. They'd seen no one since the day they'd moved into the church. The search for them had apparently been called off when they'd not been found that same day. Teal'c had needed food and water and kel-no-reem. Daniel had gained strength quickly, but had stayed with Teal'c while Jack went in search of anything they could eat.

He'd found nothing. The city was an odd mixture of industrialized technology and remnants of an abandoned civilization. Well, abandoned or exterminated. There didn't seem to be conclusive evidence of either.

Jack was beginning to think they had two choices. They could either go in after Carter now and take their chances or he was going to have to set off on a longer quest to find food. A mission that might take several days and yield nothing of use. Of course going in after Carter when they had no idea where she or the stargate were located could be equally as useless. And in either case failure likely meant death.

He hated decisions like this, but they were his to make on SG-1. The others might sometimes argue, but they trusted him. He knew that. They would follow him in the end.

They would follow him_ to_ the end.

He was looking through the dust covered shelves in the basement of the church, hoping to find maybe some paint or some paper or anything he could use to mark his way on his quest, when Teal'c's voice boomed at him from the top of the stairs.

"O'Neill! You must return immediately."

Jack felt a cold knife stab through his chest. He quickly skirted the piles of debris and charged up the steps. "What's wrong?"

Teal'c was calm and motioned toward the loft. "Daniel Jackson has found something."

Jack shot him an irritated glance for the false alarm and made his way up to the loft. He could see Daniel's shadow outside of the octagonal window. When he stepped through the broken door, he saw Daniel hunkered down on his heels on the balcony looking out at the city through Jack's monocular.

"What do you got?" Jack hunkered down beside him.

Daniel glanced at him and then handed him the monocular, pointing to a distant position to his right. "There's a man over there."

Jack put the monocular to his eye and began slowly scanning the area.

Daniel's voice was soft beside him. "There's a row of old buildings like this one, but not as big, behind those strange tubes that run along the ground over there. I see him occasionally passing in front of a window."

Jack found the buildings and watched them. After a few moments, a bearded man walked in front of one of the glassless windows. "Bit," he stated.

"What?"

"That's Bit."

"The guy who likes power bars?"

"Yeah."

"We should go over and talk to him."

Jack lowered the monocular and twisted his mouth a bit. "Don't know if it'll do any good. He thinks I'm a… crawler, whatever that is."

"It's a bug," Daniel said absently.

Jack turned his head and stared at him. Daniel was staring down at the street, but there was a faraway look in his eyes. "It's a what?" Jack asked.

Daniel glanced quickly at him, saw his expression and held his gaze. "A bug." He furrowed his brows, thinking.

Jack waited. Memories had been coming back to Daniel in increasing numbers over the past few days. Some of them had been rather disturbing in nature, and Jack hadn't pressed him. Daniel had apparently been part of some sort of maintenance unit. He cleaned computer systems and recycled the trash, which seemed to mostly consist of throwing old machinery, and dead human bodies, into the recycling chute and casting them out of the building. The memories were there. He remembered what he had done. He simply didn't have a mental log of how he'd felt or why he'd done those things.

Jack prodded him a bit. "What's a bug, Daniel?"

Daniel licked his lips. "I think it's the name they give to… pests. Things that are a danger to… to… "

"To what?"

"The system." Daniel took in a long, slow breath. "I think this whole planet is run by some sort of computer, Jack. And somehow, the people are… plugged into it."

Jack raised his eyebrows. "Like The Matrix?"

Daniel shot him a long-suffering glance. "Not exactly."

"Then what exactly? We need to know what we're up against, Daniel."

"I don't know," Daniel looked frustrated. "I still get the hive mind feeling from all of this, but there was so much technology. So much machinery and wiring. It felt robotic."

Jack sighed. "Great."

"Jack, we have to get Sam out of there soon. If she's hooked up to that thing… "

"I know!" Jack snapped, feeling heat rising into face. He forced himself to regain control. "I know," he repeated, quieter. "I don't think we're just going to run into her in the lobby the way I did with you. She may not even be in there anymore. What if they took her away? She could be in any of these buildings." He waved his hand indicating the entire landscape of the city. "She could be on the other side of the planet."

Daniel's jaw tightened. "I'm trying to remember as much as possible, but we can use any information we can get."

"Yes. And?"

"And, we need to talk to Bit. Now."

Jack eyed him resignedly. "We only have one power bar left."

"It'll have to be enough."

\+ + +  
**[ forsaken ]**

The row of buildings was in serious disrepair. Windows were long gone. Most of the doors hung on broken hinges. Sometimes whole walls were missing. The building they'd seen Bit in through the monocular was repaired haphazardly with wooden siding from the nearby wrecks.

Bit's house?

Jack tentatively eased the door open, zat ready. Daniel was close behind him, but Teal'c held the other zat and watched the street.

"Hellooo," Daniel suddenly called. Jack glared at him and made a shushing gesture with his hand. Daniel only looked a little chastised, but he kept quiet.

The door opened into a room filled with junk. It wasn't leftover debris though. There were distinct pieces of machinery and textiles and plastic odds and ends. They weren't heaped randomly, but placed carefully and free of dust. It was someone's storage closet.

Jack moved into the room, glancing around. There was another door against the back wall that led further into the house. He started toward it, looking back to give Teal'c the sign language to stay put and stand guard. Teal'c gave him a sober nod in reply. Daniel followed Jack.

The second door was hung crookedly and gave a loud creak as Jack pushed it open with his boot. He winced a bit and held the zat up, ready. He stepped warily into a shadowed room with the same careful stacks of goods and gear. There was a scuffling sound, and Jack glanced to his right. Behind a large, shiny piece of flat metal propped against a wall, hunched Bit. He stared at Jack from his hiding place with wide eyes.

Jack took a step back. "Hey, Bit."

"I thought they caught you," Bit said.

"Told you I was sneaky," Jack replied. He kept his distance, trying not to send the old man scurrying.

"Bit, we'd like to talk to you." Daniel leaned in the doorway and looked earnestly at the guy.

Bit looked a bit startled. He twitched nervously. Jack put an arm across Daniel's chest and pushed him back through the door. "Don't freak him out."

"I'm not- " Daniel tripped as he moved backwards, and he swore under his breath. "Damn it."

Jack backed out of the room where Bit was hiding and reached into his pocket for the power bar. He held it up. "Remember these?"

Bit just stared at him.

Jack moved it through his fingers with a sigh. "Well, look. We just want to talk to you. Talk to us, and we'll leave you alone. And you'll get this." Jack held the bar up again.

He stepped back and settled himself against one of the walls, folding his arms across his chest, zat in one hand. Daniel watched him and then sat on what looked like an old barrel. A few moments later, Bit came tentatively to the doorway. His fingers moved restlessly together in front of him, and his eyes darted around from Jack to Daniel to the power bar in Jack's free hand. He barely hesitated on the zat.

"You are obsolete?" He asked, eyes sliding from Jack to Daniel.

Jack glanced at Daniel. Daniel raised his brows and looked at Bit. "Ahhh, obsolete. You mean, no longer useful to the… system?"

"Yes. The System." Bit said the words reverently.

"The system," Daniel repeated it pensively. He studied Bit. "What is the system, Bit?"

Bit suddenly eyed him suspiciously. Daniel hurried to mend fences. "We are obsolete, Bit. Just like you… right?"

Bit nodded.

Daniel took a deep, quiet breath. "We, uh, don't remember much. That's why we want to know."

"Damaged." Bit nodded knowingly. He suddenly spread his arms. Jack jumped a bit, jerking the zat up. Bit ignored him, bliss on his face. "The System is everything. It is all knowing and it created the world and the sky and all the beings within." His smile faded a bit. "Except the bugs."

Daniel nodded slowly. "The bugs want to hurt the system?"

"Yes."

"What about the Interceptors?" Jack asked.

Bit looked at him uneasily. "They catch the bugs."

"Ah. Right."

Daniel slid a warning glance in Jack's direction. Jack responded with an indignant tilt of the head.

Daniel leaned forward and spoke carefully to Bit. "What did you do for the system, Bit?"

Bit hesitated, chewing his lip. "Code."

"You, what… broke code, created code?"

"Created code. Fixed code."

Daniel's eyebrows suddenly shot upward. "Code. You programmed code? Like a computer?"

Bit simply looked at him, confused. He scratched at his beard and glanced at the power bar. Jack kept it visible, crinkling the foil on it every so often.

Daniel steepled his fingers against his mouth and chin. "Why are you obsolete, Bit?"

"Power surge. I could not connect."

Jack shifted nervously. This was some freaky talk. Except for his Sony Playstation and the occasional computer program that Carter talked him through, he didn't much like computers. He liked them even less when they did freaky things like connect to living human beings or assimilate civilizations or make lots of little creepy bugs out of small tiles that wouldn't stay dead when you shot them.

"Are there others who are obsolete?"

Bit nodded.

Daniel continued, "Where are they?"

Bit hesitated again and then motioned to them. He turned and walked back through the second doorway. Daniel glanced at Jack who looked surprised.

"I didn't see any other people around," Daniel said.

Jack shrugged and walked after Bit. Daniel followed.

They walked through the second room and through yet another door and into a short hallway. At the end of the hallway, Bit disappeared down a set of stairs. Jack glanced back at Daniel. "Heads up."

Daniel nodded, even though he had no weapon, and followed Jack slowly down the stairs. When they were at the bottom, they saw the other obsolete workers. Several skeletons lay curled on the floor in the corner. Daniel let out a heavy breath.

"Does the system kill them, or do they just… die?"

Bit fidgeted. "They do not know how to live outside. There is no reason."

"You did."

"I remember… different times." Bit seemed thoughtful for a moment.

Jack suddenly spied something and walked away from them and to another corner of the room. He leaned down and picked up a SGC pack. "Where did you get this?"

Bit swallowed. "It was recycled by the system. It wasn't needed!"

Jack walked it back and set it on the floor, flipping up the cover and pawing through it. "It's your pack, Daniel. Looks mostly intact."

"It was not needed," Bit insisted.

Daniel held out a hand in reassurance. "It's all right. We understand. I'd like to take it back though."

Bit chewed his lip and fidgeted.

Jack pulled a plastic bag out of a side pocket of the pack. He opened it and took 2 power bars out and held them up. "We'll give you more in trade. Okay?"

Bit furrowed his brows. "Trade," he repeated.

Jack held out the three power bars. "You take these. We take this." He patted the pack.

Bit glanced between them and then eased forward and grabbed the bars from Jack's hand. "Yes."

Bit was scared and far too twitchy after that. He had trouble concentrating on Daniel's questions, and Jack realized they'd gotten everything out of them they were going to get.

They walked slowly back to the church, talking only occasionally. The information had been ominous and not useful in a tactical sense, but it had filled in some of the blanks concerning the people and the buildings of this planet. It had also given a clearer picture of what Carter was doing at that moment, and the thought cast a dark mood over the remaining members of SG-1.

"You don't suppose we could get detailed floor plans out of him, do you?" Jack asked, wryly, as they walked.

"I doubt it," Daniel replied. "Give him some time to settle down, and I'll talk to him again."

"I wonder why I was 'recycled'... " Jack pondered, lifting his fingers to make quotation marks in the air.

"Maybe you just didn't have the kind of knowledge they wanted," Daniel offered.

"Maybe. But I could have pushed a broom like you were."

"Perhaps your brain was not able to connect to the system, O'Neill." Teal'c readjusted the pack on his shoulder.

Jack eyed him. "What do you mean by that?"

Teal'c opened his mouth to answer, but Daniel jumped in with a warning glance. "Ahh, maybe it was the ancient knowledge that was downloaded into your brain."

"That's gone now."

"Yes, but it may have fundamentally changed your brain in some way, Jack. Even on a molecular level. It might have made a difference in this instance."

Jack looked at him sideways with a suspicious expression. "I suppose... "

Daniel's gaze shifted over Jack's shoulder, and Jack snapped his head around just in time to catch Teal'c giving Daniel the raised eyebrow. Jack scowled. "You know, maybe my brain was just not all exhausted from thinking about science all the time. Maybe my brain was resistant to their mind control. You ever think of that?"

Teal'c stared at him for a long moment. "I am certain that is correct, O'Neill."

He didn't sound certain. He sounded vaguely patronizing. Jack gave him a look of displeasure. Teal'c just gave him the eyebrow again.

"In any case," Daniel stated, interrupting their silent battle. "It's a good thing you were recycled, or I'd still be working body clean-up and Teal'c would likely be dead."

"Indeed," Teal'c agreed.

"Yeah, well, we're not done yet." Jack sobered as they climbed the hill to the church.

He sat on the balcony that night with his back against the thick, painted window, looking out into the darkness. When he stared at the stygian sky, he saw occasional ripples of light. They would roll across the sky and reflect ever so slightly from the tops of the black buildings. He thought he heard thunder sometimes.

He hated this place. What might have once been fascinating was now just exhausting and unbearable. He wanted to blow it out of the universe. He wanted to turn a bright light on it. He wanted his team back. He wanted all of them, whole and healthy and back where they belonged.

Goddamn it.

\+ + +

**[ atrophy ]**

The next day, he woke up to find Daniel gone. He wasn't unduly disturbed at first, figuring the man had gone for water or couldn't sleep and was wandering nearby, but when several hours had passed with no sign of him, Jack got worried.

Teal'c was still not a hundred percent. He spent more time than usual in kel-no-reem, trying to repair both himself and his symbiote. Although they gave him the majority of the food, there simply wasn't much to spare. Jack's trousers were already looser. The MRE's were the best possible thing to have in this situation with their decent caloric content, but they had to space them out. The goal was to keep from starving, not to be well fed. Finding Daniel's pack with its treasure trove of another 8 MRE's had buoyed his hopes a bit.

Jack used the monocular to search the city's streets for signs of Daniel. It wasn't until he trained the spyglass on Bit's place that he saw the archeologist trudging back toward the church, a big bag in his hands.

Jack was waiting for him at the front door when he returned.

"What the hell were you thinking?"

Daniel blinked at him, stopping short as he crested the hill to the church and was met by Jack's angry demand. "What are you talking about?"

"Did you even take a zat with you?"

"I-"

"I'll answer that for you," Jack snapped, not allowing him to finish. "No, you didn't. I know because they're both laying right where we put them last night."

"I couldn't sleep, and we needed more information from Bit," Daniel protested.

"And you couldn't wake either me or Teal'c to go with you? Daniel, how the hell do you know if that guy is dangerous or not?"

"Well, obviously not. I'm here, aren't I?" Daniel was getting that steely, stubborn glint to his eyes that warned of his irritation.

"I didn't drag your ass out of zombie-central just for you to get yourself killed by a lack of common sense."

"Jack," Daniel growled, jaws tight and eyes hard.

"This isn't some fascinating social experiment, Daniel. How do I drill that through your head?" Jack was aware he was going a little overboard, but he couldn't seem to stop himself. He'd managed to get two members of his team back and was desperate to go in and get the third. He didn't want to slip backwards by suddenly losing one.

"Jack!" Daniel's voice was a sharp crack above the quiet hum of the city. Jack focused on him. Daniel held up the bag in his hands. "I found food!"

\+ + +

Jack stared at the sticky brown bar in his hands. About the size of a deck of cards, it seemed to be made of some sort of pureed grain and… other things he couldn't identify, and was then pressed together into a bar that was soft and sticky and didn't really smell all that appetizing. He glanced at Teal'c and saw him studying the bar with a vastly uncomfortable expression on his face, the eyebrow doing double-duty.

"This is food?" Jack asked.

Daniel smiled. "Yup!"

"For humans?" Jack added, dryly.

"Of course!" Daniel pulled another one from his sack. It was encased in a thick, peel-able plastic, almost like a rind. "I think they're some sort of emergency ration that this planet's military used. There were just crates upon crates of these things in the building that Bit showed me. I think it was sort of apocalyptic at the end, and the survivors gathered all the food and supplies into one area for the long haul." Daniel gave a sad frown. "Which, um, wasn't all that long really."

Teal'c sniffed his bar and jerked his head back again, eyes lifting suspiciously to Daniel. "This does not smell like palatable food, Daniel Jackson. It is possible it has spoiled."

"Yeah," Jack agreed, pointing at Teal'c. "Didn't they have any Spam or maybe a nice Twinkie or two? Those last forever, don't they?"

"It's not spoiled. Their preservation technology is really amazing. They even had what looked like fruit preserved in glass jars… and they were whole and not dried or soaking in brine or preservatives."

Jack twisted a corner of his mouth down. "And yet you chose to bring us these instead."

Daniel grimaced. "Well, honestly, Jack… there was a lot of food, but it was Bit's lifetime supply. I didn't feel right."

Jack sighed. Typical Daniel. Maybe he was right. Still… he stared at the bar uneasily. "You know, these could have anything in them. They might not be safe."

"They're fine," Daniel stated with enough confidence that Jack eyed him from under raised brows.

"And you would know that… how?" Jack put some warning into his tone. Goddamn it, Daniel.

"Because I ate one on the way back."

"Goddamn it, Daniel!"

Daniel shrugged. "Well, one of us had to try them, and I knew you'd be all paranoid about it, so I just did it. And I feel fine. They're a little chewy and don't have much of a flavor, but I feel pretty good. I think the nutrition in them is compact and pretty dense."

Jack glared at him, but then Teal'c took a bite of his bar. Jack watched him as he chewed and then swallowed. "Well?"

Teal'c hesitated, waiting. "I feel fine, O'Neill. Perhaps you should wait until tomorrow to partake though. Then you can be sure that Daniel Jackson and I have suffered no ill effects."

Jack looked between them, irritation written all over his features, before he swore quietly. "Aw, hell, it's already open." He took a bite. Daniel was right. It was chewy and tasted vaguely meaty and had a grainy texture. It wasn't horrible though, and it seemed to sit well in his stomach.

All right. So they had food. Of a sort anyway. One more thing off his mind. He opened one of their canteens to wash the bite down and then leaned back against the table in their loft to finish eating the ration bar. "So, what else did you find out?" He asked Daniel.

Daniel sank down onto the wide pallet where he still slept in Carter's sleeping bag. Since he'd been sleeping in it for nearly a week, it made more sense to just let her use his when, and if, they found her. "Not much really. Bit isn't too focused on anything but day-to-day survival. I have a feeling that being hooked to 'the system'"-Daniel said the words with deliberate emphasis-"takes a toll on the human mind."

"Ya think?" Jack took another swig of water.

Daniel ignored him. "The building he showed me when I asked about food was spectacular. It was obviously a shelter, and it was stocked to the ceiling. I could have explored it all day. It told a lot about the society that used to live here. Something big happened on this planet not too long ago, and it took over."

Jack wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and shot him a sardonic glance. "Something like… Hal 9000?"

Daniel didn't smile. "Something like that, yeah."

"You believe this planet has been taken over by a sentient computer, Daniel Jackson?" Teal'c furrowed his brows.

"I'm not really sure, Teal'c," Daniel replied, rubbing his fingers over the sharp shadow of beard on his jaw. "All I know is what I remember from being 'connected' and what I've observed out here since then. And obviously something or someone is controlling everything and everyone here. Even the climate seems controlled." He motioned toward the window and outside. " Every basic job has workers to keep the system running. Obviously the technology is computer driven and the prime objective seems to be the upkeep of 'The System', as Bit calls it." He scrubbed at his face and then ran his fingers tiredly into his hair, bracing his elbows on his knees.

"Daniel?"

He glanced up again. "I'm okay. I just… talking to Bit about it all made me remember more things about my time inside of it."

"What sort of things?"

"Just images mostly. Walking hallways, the people I saw, the way information was always just _there_ for me when I needed it."

"Hive mind?"

Daniel pinched the bridge of his nose. "I don't know. Whenever I needed to know something, it was just… there. But at the same time, I don't remember any other voices. I never communicated with the other workers. Ever."

"You were pretty glazed over when I found you. You didn't fight me, you just kept trying to avoid me and walk away."

Daniel shook his head. "I didn't have a need to remember anything because whatever I needed to know would be fed to me. I think that's why I'm having a hard time remembering things."

Jack walked over to him and gripped his shoulder briefly. "It's all right. We've got time now."

Daniel took a deep breath. "How much time does Sam have though?"

"We're going in and we're not coming out without her, whether we go in blind or not."

Daniel glanced at Teal'c, who nodded slowly at him, eyes determined and confident. Jack gave his shoulder a squeeze and then moved off. "Whatever it takes."

\+ + +

**[ depth perception ]**

_Daniel_

The talk with Bit had done amazing things to his mind. Just hearing the terminology that Bit used when talking about The System had spurred Daniel's mind into turmoil.

He dreamed that night as he did most nights now, of walking long, straight corridors. He never felt lost. He always knew exactly where he was going. He saw brightly lit rows of workers, all in white suits, wired to the gills and eerily silent as they sat in their docking bays. Sometimes The System would send him to a bay that was dark. Inside was always a lifeless body, the unit expired. The System would immediately shut down the connection, and Daniel would disconnect them and take them out to be recycled.

Except…

Except this dream was different. In this one he kept finding himself in a certain room. At the very bottom of the building. And there was a unit he was drawn to again and again. He knew this unit was female, and that shouldn't have mattered or made sense to him, but it did. He suddenly saw image after image of himself standing beside her, staring down. She was just like the other units, in a white suit and hard-wired, head shaved to make the contact points smooth and accessible. But… something was different.

Daniel woke with a jerk; sweat beading on his brow. He sat up in the pallet and felt the breath heavy in his lungs. His heart was racing, and the utter darkness disoriented him for a moment. Before he'd gotten his bearings, he'd propelled himself out of bed and onto the floor, fumbling forward until he'd planted a hand directly into Jack's back.

"Jack!" His sleep-drenched voice was loud and dry.

Jack woke, startled, and turned beneath Daniel's trembling hands. "What the hell? Daniel?"

"I know," Daniel whispered hoarsely.

"Daniel, settle down." Jack's voice was irritated. Across the loft, Daniel heard Teal'c stir and come toward them. He sat back on his heels and focused on their shadows.

"I know," Daniel repeated, his voice gaining strength. "I know where Sam is."

\+ + +

_Jack_

They went in to get Carter two days later.

Teal'c was strong enough, and they'd been able to stop the rationing. While the native ration bars made the worst MRE seem like a gourmet meal, Daniel had been right. They were fortifying and dense. Two bars could easily sustain a man Teal'c's size for a day. You didn't even get hungry. Daniel suspected they were made with some sort of time-release ability similar to earthly cold medications. Whatever, they did wonders.

Their gear was meager. The retrieval of Daniel's pack had given them nothing of a tactical advantage. There'd been no zat or pistol, not even a knife or a rope. In the end, Jack had made them suit up lightly anyway. They'd need to move fast, and like before, the best scenario ended with all four of them gating home. The worst he refused to think about. Either way, they didn't need their extra equipment. It was expendable.

Jack cleaned the Swiss Army Knife and tucked it into his shirt pocket. This time, they wouldn't give the Interceptors a chance to target them. He allowed Daniel to carry a small hand-made pack on his belt with 2 MRE's and the med kit inside. If they got Carter out but were somehow stranded elsewhere, he wanted to be prepared to take care of her. They all carried canteens and homemade knives that Teal'c had made which were basically prison shivs made of scrap metal and wood. He and Teal'c carried the two zats.

They got in the same way Jack had the last time. A careful exploration of the junkyard showed no sign of guards, and there was plenty of cord in the pile. The corded wire he'd used last time was removed from the chute as expected, but when the doors opened to let down a rain of scrap, Jack could see that nothing had been done to safeguard the entrance.

"It might not have realized how you got in," Daniel theorized. He'd taken to calling the city and the buildings and the entire system "it" instead of "them". "The rope was probably just an obstruction in the chute and had to be removed."

"Well, it's our lucky day then," Jack commented grimly. He was in a somber mood. He was accustomed to burying his nervousness and doing the job that needed to be done, but concern for Sam was also leaking through. Finding her was the first step. Then they'd see what sort of shape she was in.

The three of them made quick work of fashioning a grappling hook and braiding it into a long coil of wire. The peak of the junk pile seemed to always be within 50 feet or so of the chute's doors. Jack suspected that some of the workers must come out to rake the scrap out toward the walls of the huge yard, but he'd never seen anyone.

"Hey," Daniel suddenly called softly from where he knelt working on the cord. Jack looked over at him. Daniel nodded toward one of the entrances to the yard. Jack glanced that way and saw Bit peering at them from the opening.

"Will he try to interfere?" Teal'c asked, eyes hard.

"I don't think so. He's probably just wondering what the hell we're doing." Daniel sighed.

"He tried to steal my jacket the last time I saw him here." Jack felt uneasy with an audience.

"Well, he thought you were dead," Daniel replied, faint smile on his face.

"As long as he keeps quiet."

"Jack… " Daniel said hesitantly.

Jack ground his teeth together. He hated that tone. That tone meant Daniel was going to point something out that Jack wouldn't be happy about. "What?" It came out more snappish than he'd intended.

Daniel didn't fluster easily though. He steadily held Jack's gaze. "We can't just leave him here alone. He's an outcast. We need to take him back through the gate with us."

"This is his home, Daniel. He hasn't asked us to take him back with us."

"He doesn't even realize there's a different life available to him. He survives when everyone else who is obsolete dies."

"We cannot force this man to leave if he does not wish it," Teal'c stated.

"I know. I'm just saying we have to try."

Jack blew a light breath out between his lips and hesitated in his work, squinting at Daniel. "The best case scenario here is that we find Carter and the gate and we go home today. If that happens, we _are_ going through that gate. We'll decide how to help Bit later, once we're all out of danger. Getting you home safely is my first priority, Daniel. That's non-negotiable."

Daniel seemed to want to argue that. He looked disagreeable and opened his mouth to speak.

Jack cut him off before he got started. "Non-negotiable, Daniel."

Daniel chewed the inside of his lip and furrowed his brows. "All right. Let's just find Sam first. We can worry about everything else later."

Jack was willing to let him get by with that. They needed to concentrate on the task at hand.

\+ + +

**[ infrastructure ]**

They had to wait in the narrow tunnel beneath the chute control room for several long minutes while the worker there completed his job. Daniel seemed abnormally preoccupied, and Jack could guess why. He watched as Daniel reached out again and again and laid fingers upon the eerily cool, vibrating walls.

"Creepy," Jack remarked quietly to him. Daniel glanced at him and nodded, and even Teal'c gave a small sound of agreement.

Once the worker had gone, they climbed up the short ladder and into the upper level. Daniel glanced around with an uneasy expression.

"This is where I found you," Jack explained. "And, um, zatted you."

Daniel didn't answer, but he walked over to the control panel to give it a once over. Jack listened for that louder rumbling sound that had seemed to throw the building into a tizzy the last time. It was quiet except for the ever-present hum. Teal'c, zat ready, took a short recon walk up the hallway leading out of the control room.

"Let's get moving," Jack finally urged Daniel as he glanced back from the control panel. Daniel nodded, and they moved carefully down the hallway after Teal'c.

"Where are we going?" Jack asked, as they reached the first intersection. He lowered himself to place a penny on the floor as he did the last time.

Daniel closed his eyes and thought about it a moment. "Straight ahead."

They walked forward with Jack in the lead and Daniel behind him. Teal'c trailed a few steps, watching their backs.

"She's deep," Daniel said as they walked. "No windows and it's dark. I remember having to go down quite a ways." He led them through the corridors until they reached a seeming pivot point in the building. There was a circular shaft that ran up and down through the building with a wide hallway surrounding it. Corridors branched off this area like spokes on a wheel. Jack placed a penny on the one they'd come out of.

"What is this place?" Teal'c asked, worried.

Daniel licked his lips and looked up to where the shaft disappeared through the ceiling. "It's the central hub of the building. I would sometimes have to do maintenance here." He walked around the shaft slowly and then stopped. He leaned close to the surface and then used his fingernails to pry open a small door. They all leaned over to have a look inside.

A smaller shaft of glowing red light ran up through the center disappearing far above and far below. Thin black wires connected it to the walls. The same wiring also lay flat and thick against the inner surfaces of the shaft. Jack felt his head begin to throb.

"You feel that?" He asked. He pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead.

"It is most uncomfortable," Teal'c said. He shifted nervously.

Daniel frowned. "It does feel weird. As if there's some sort of wave coming off of it." He held a hand out as if he might be able to feel it radiating from within.

"I think you'd better shut that door," Jack warned.

For once, Daniel didn't argue. He shut the door and stepped away from it.

"Which way?" Jack asked, trying to keep him focused.

Daniel glanced around and then walked around to the opposite side of the shaft. He stood in front of a door, and it opened revealing an elevator. "Here."

They stepped into the small elevator, and the door shushed closed behind them. Daniel stared at the wall where a control panel would be located on Earth. "Ummm…"

"How did you control it before?" Jack asked as his eyes scanned the wall for the faint indentation he'd seen before.

"I don't think I did," Daniel replied. "I think The System did it for me. It knew where it was sending me so it just sent me there."

"That is most unhelpful," Teal'c stated. He sounded vaguely miffed, and it drew a raised brow from Daniel.

Jack traced the indentation he'd found on the wall with his fingertips. He found a place where the panel's door was bent outwards just enough to catch the edge with the pad of his forefinger, and he forced it outward. The door popped open.

"What the hell is that?" Daniel exclaimed, looking over his shoulder.

Jack backed off and let him in. "It's how I operated one of these things when I went looking for Teal'c."

Daniel studied it with interest. "It looks like a much less futuristic version of an elevator. As if this is actually an older building, but was simply remodeled into what it is now."

"Which button do we press to get to Carter?" Jack asked impatiently.

Daniel thought about that. "Truthfully? I'm not sure. I'll know the level when I see it." He reached out and pushed the bottom button.

"Daniel!" Jack protested as the elevator suddenly hummed and began moving.

"I know she's deep, so we might as well try the bottom button first," Daniel explained.

Jack swallowed a snippy reply about Daniel's seeming urge to touch things and push buttons before Jack had had time to assess the situation, but it was already done, and it was a logical move in any case.

Jack put himself and Teal'c back to back to face both doors in the elevator. He wasn't going to be taken by surprise twice by that move.

The first time the doors opened, they revealed more corridors, and Daniel shook his head and hit the next button up from the last.

The second time, they revealed a huge room of upright electronic panels with pulsing blue lights. Workers in white suits stood in front of them, wires running from their limbs and their heads into the panels. The workers moved restlessly, shifting on their feet, arms held at odd angles. Jack felt suddenly cold.

Daniel shook his head though, and hit another button.

The third time, they saw a dimly lit hallway, and Daniel nodded. They stepped warily out of the elevator and walked forward. The hum seemed louder here, and that alone made Jack nervous and hopeful.

A little ways down the hall they came to a door. Jack touched it lightly, and it slid suddenly open. He jerked back slightly, but then leaned forward when he saw no one and nothing immediately threatening. It looked like a lab. There were machines and tables and shelves of vials and tubes and bags. Everything was immaculately clean, but then the whole place seemed that way.

Jack stepped inside, zat held ready. Daniel stepped in behind him. The room was small, and Jack cleared it in moments. No workers huddled behind shelving or tables. No Carter either. He was about to move out into the hallway again when Daniel gave a sharp whisper.

"Jack!"

Jack turned and saw Daniel holding up one of their P-90's. His eyes widened in joy. "Sweet!" He walked quickly over and found the other two automatic weapons along with Daniel's pistol all laying on one of the lab tables. There was no sign of Teal'c's staff weapon. There were deep scratches in the metal where it looked as if samples had been taken. The clips were laying alongside the guns, a few bullets disassembled on the table.

Jack picked them up one by one, loading the clips back into them. There were four extra clips and that was all. They usually held ten altogether, but a quick search failed to reveal the remaining six. The pistol held one clip, and only four bullets. Jack handed Daniel one of the P-90's and tucked the pistol into his belt. He picked up another P-90 and tossed the last one to Teal'c.

"Now," he said, eyes glittering. "Now, we find Carter."

\+ + +

**[ soul of the machine ]**

Daniel led them into another room, this one creepy in a whole new way. It was long and narrow and dark except for the rows of reclining chairs that ran the length of the room. Each one was brightly lit and each one held a human being in a white suit, head shaved bald where wires and metal bands attached to their skin. Wires came from their fingertips and tangled together before disappearing into the control panels and machinery and even the floor and the walls. They reclined on their backs, eyes open and not seeing. They stared straight ahead, no focus to their sight. The hum was substantially louder here.

They walked down one row toward the opposite end of the room. Jack scanned the faces as they walked but didn't see Carter in any of them. He wondered briefly if he'd even be able to recognize her if she looked like these people.

"She's not in here," Daniel said quietly, catching Jack's searching gaze on the reclining figures.

He was far too somber, and Jack took no comfort in his words. He exchanged uneasy glances with Teal'c.

At the far end of the room was another door. They went through this one and then down a spiral staircase. It was stone, of the same type as the quarantine area. Old architecture. Maybe Daniel was right. When they went high tech, they just built the new around and on top of the old.

At the bottom of the stairs was another door. It opened easily. It was obvious that whatever was running this place didn't feel security was needed. And maybe it wasn't. It had the Interceptors to chase down pests, and it didn't have to worry about the workers.

Inside was a small circular room with several doors. But in the center, grouped around a towering and violently humming cylinder of black metal were seven chairs.

"O'Neill!" Teal'c's voice was thick with horror as he stared at one chair.

It took Jack only seconds to realize Carter was the one housed in it.

"Carter!" Both he and Daniel raced to her chair where she reclined as the others did, in the white suit, eyes vacant and turned inward. Her lips moved just a bit, soundlessly. Her scalp was clean-shaven except for the barest hint of fine blonde hair starting to grow back in. She had the same metal headgear stuck to her temples that Daniel had had on, and various wires and tubes seemed to be running in and out of her everywhere.

Jack felt his stomach turn.

"Sam?" Daniel reached out and turned her head slightly so he was in her line of vision. She didn't react and didn't look at him.

Jack licked his lips and glanced around. There was a thick torrent of wiring that swirled up to the ceiling and then massed together before sweeping up through the hole that housed the giant cylinder. There were no switches. No levers. No keyboards or buttons.

"How the hell do we get her out of this, Daniel?" Jack set his gun on the floor, and began examining the wires connected to Sam.

"You said the piece on my head, and even the chip, weren't buried very deeply. I'd guess we just… disconnect her."

"Does it control her heart and her lungs?"

Daniel leaned over her and pressed a hand over her heart. "I don't think so. I think all the workers are fairly able to breathe and live on their own. It just feeds them and keeps them clean."

Jack fingered a small wire running into her forearm. He wasn't sure what it was, but it was as good a place as any to start. He pressed his thumb to the place where it went in, and then he pulled it smoothly out. Blood smeared over the white skin of her arm. There was a sudden flickering in the room as lights came on over the doors.

"Uh oh," Daniel muttered.

"Ignore it for now. Get her out," Jack ordered, lifting his thumb to check the blood flow from Sam's arm. It ran in a rivulet down to her fingers, dripping onto the floor, and he pressed his thumb back down. "Teal'c! Get the med kit from Daniel's pack."

Teal'c did so, as Daniel began easing wires and tubes one at a time from Sam's body. Jack began taking bandages from Teal'c and taping them over the small wounds. He hoped she wasn't full of some sort of anti-clotting agent, or she might be in trouble.

She made a small sound as Daniel pulled the last tube from her. Daniel stood and gripped her chin gently, turning her face toward him. "Sam?"

Jack looked up and watched her eyelids flutter a bit. Was that a good sign?

They lifted her onto the floor, and the flickering lights became more strident. Jack pulled his zat out.

"Jack!" Daniel stared at him, eyes wide.

"It's the way I disconnected you, Daniel. Those metal plates on your head dropped off when I zatted you."

"She's already unconscious! It could kill her."

"Yeah," Jack agreed.

Daniel glared at him.

"Major Carter would not wish to live this way," Teal'c stated quietly. "You know this, Daniel Jackson."

"She's tough," Jack reassured him. "It's the only way we're going to get her out of here and get that thing out of her. It's in her mind, Daniel. If there was no other way out, would you want to live like this?"

Daniel slumped a bit. Of course he wouldn't. The answer was obvious in his eyes. He shuffled back out of the way.

Jack fired.

Sam's body jerked, and the metal headgear drooped. Daniel leaned over her to pluck it off and press his fingers to her neck. The lights above her station suddenly went out. "She's alive," Daniel said with relief.

Jack let himself take a small piece of solace in that.

"O'Neill. I suspect our presence will be known shortly." Teal'c was glancing worriedly around the room at the flickering lights.

Jack agreed. This was obviously some sort of inner chamber at the heart of the system. The loss of Carter's mind was bound to disrupt things. He quickly dug the Swiss Army knife from his pocket. "Hold her head, Daniel. I've got to get that chip."

Daniel sat and pulled Sam up against him. He bent her head gently forward, and they stared at the glowing red light at the base of her skull. "Jesus… " Daniel muttered.

Jack rested a hand along the back of her head, holding her steady. It felt odd to feel warm skin where soft blond hair should be. He slid the knife along the chip's edge, lifting it out on the blade's tip. Daniel taped a bandage over the cut.

Jack set the chip on the vacated chair, and glanced back at Teal'c. "We're going to have to carry her out of here, Teal'c."

Teal'c nodded and came forward, handing his P-90 to Jack. He hunkered down and scooped Carter up in his arms, glancing down at her with a troubled expression.

A worker suddenly appeared in the door. He ignored them at first and tried to walk around them to get to Sam's empty chair. Jack stepped back and let him through. The worker picked up the errant chip and stared at it blankly. Suddenly he looked up and right at them, focused and eerily intent.

Jack zatted him. Then he zatted the towering black cylinder and whatever hummed inside of it, as Daniel yelled at him to stop. It didn't matter. The zat's swirling energy just ran along the surface and dissipated quickly. The lights didn't even flicker.

But the door started to close.

Jack shouted even as Teal'c was through the door, Sam in his arms. Daniel leapt with him, and they squeezed through just before the opening became too narrow and trapped them. They rested briefly in the hallway outside at the foot of the spiral staircase. Jack heard an underlying rumbling starting beneath the hum.

"Now!" He shouted. "Get going!"

They charged up the stairs and into the room with the rows of reclining workers. Jack let Daniel lead hoping he'd be able to get them out faster. He kept Teal'c and Sam between them. Teal'c was moving well considering the buck thirty or so of unconscious Carter he was carrying.

They followed Daniel to the elevator where the door opened. Daniel hesitated.

"Daniel?" Jack inquired, glancing behind them just in case. The rumbling was steady now.

Daniel glanced back at them. "Jack, I'm not sure we should get in. If The System was the thing trying to close the door on us back there, then what could it do to us in an elevator?"

Jack took a brief second to think. "Alternatives?"

Daniel seemed to think rapidly and then deflate. He grimaced. "None. I don't know if there are stairs or not."

Jack glanced at the open elevator and then around them at the hallway. There were a few smaller lab rooms along the hall, but none of them had had extra doors inside. The room where they'd found Carter was cut off from them now. There was no choice. It was wait here or take their chances.

"Get on," he ordered.

They filed into the elevator. Jack went to hit the button for the recycling level when the elevator suddenly started moving.

"Great," he muttered darkly. Beside him, Carter suddenly moaned in Teal'c's arms. Her white suit was smeared in her own blood from the shallow wounds the wiring had left.

He hit the button anyway, figuring it would do no good and The System would override it, but he felt it was worth the effort of one finger. He and Daniel stood back to back while Teal'c lowered Carter to her feet and held her up while he shifted her body and slung her over one shoulder. Jack handed him his P-90 again. It wasn't the most comfortable position to put Sam in, but escape and survival were the new goals now. An armed Teal'c would significantly up their chances.

When the doors opened, Jack held them back for a moment. He pushed the button for the correct floor again, but nothing happened. When he peered out, he saw only white corridors. He glanced at Daniel. Daniel peered out and chewed his lip for a moment, thinking. Finally he glanced back at Jack and shrugged, shaking his head. He didn't know where they were.

Jack stepped out carefully. There didn't seem to be anyone around. Why the hell had they been dumped out on this level?

They walked up the hallway and then went straight through the first intersection. Jack realized they were pretty much on their own now. With Daniel lost and the elevator useless to them, they'd just have to walk until Daniel recognized something or they lucked out.

When they forged through the next intersection, there was shuffling sound to their right. Jack glanced that way and was confronted with a group of black rubber-suited figures, whole-head helmets and binocular eye gear fitted over their faces. They were still a hundred feet away, but they raised long thin weapons that looked suspiciously like guns and began running down the corridor toward SG-1.

"Move!" Jack shouted, shoving Daniel to the front of their line and tapping Teal'c to follow. Jack brought up the rear, and they ran. They'd made it about a hundred feet before Jack looked back and saw the first of the Interceptors sliding around the corner and starting down their corridor after them. Jack brought his P-90 up and then hesitated. He had no idea if the bullets would ricochet off the walls or not. He held up the zat and fired as he ran. It was a close range weapon, but the beam hit the lead Interceptor and swirled around him.

It then jumped to the next guy and dissipated. They continued pursuit without a misstep.

"Damn it!" Jack swore, awkwardly shoving the zat into his belt again. "Zats are useless," he called forward. As Daniel suddenly flailed to a stop ahead and barged around a corner, Teal'c following, Jack dropped painfully to his knees with a grimace and slid to a stop at the edge of the wall. He whirled around brought the P-90 up, took quick aim and fired off a few short, semi-auto bursts. The rounds embedded themselves in the wall and jerked the lead Interceptor off his feet. He shook on the floor, and Jack saw a blood spray on the wall next to him. Not infallible then. Thank God.

The others ignored their fallen compatriot and charged after Jack. He leapt to his feet and ran after Daniel and Teal'c, who were now turning right at another intersection ahead. As he slowed to make the turn, there was a high-pitched whistling in the air, and something tugged at his BDU sleeve. He glanced at it, and there was a gaping hole in the sleeve above his elbow where the fabric had been cut neatly away. There was no wound on his arm, and he didn't think he'd been hit by whatever it was. He fired another burst, but unless he was going to drop to his knees and make a stand alone, he had to run and keep up with Daniel and Teal'c.

Daniel turned left at the next intersection with Teal'c following, but when Jack was again slowing to make the turn, Daniel suddenly reappeared and darted across the intersection in the other direction, yelling, "Dead end!" at Jack as he passed. Teal'c hesitated before entering the intersection, readjusting Carter's weight on his shoulder. Jack slipped around the corner in the corridor that Daniel had just started down, and nodded at Teal'c as he stuck the P-90 out and began laying down covering fire. Teal'c held his own P-90 with one hand and curved it over across his body to aim it down the hall, firing as he darted across the open space. It was only a few steps, but as he passed Jack and ran after Daniel, Jack heard something hitting the wall across from him just behind the Jaffa. Teal'c didn't stop, he knew better. Jack glanced over and saw several long, very thin, wicked looking darts sticking out of the metal. What the hell?

Whatever they were, they looked sharp as hell. He backed down the hall as fast as he could without losing his balance, watching the intersection. When one of the Interceptors suddenly entered the space, Jack fired. The guy went down. The others simply charged around the corner and came after him. No finesse at all. The System told them to pursue, and that's what they did with no concern for life or death to themselves.

Jack was suddenly yanked sideways, and he turned to find Daniel dragging him down a narrow corridor. "I found something," Daniel reported. He pointed to a hatch in the wall. Jack glanced back at the main hallway and then at the hatch again.

"What is it?"

"Recycling."

"What do you mean?"

"A recycling chute. It goes down to a bigger chute and into the main holding area. We can slide down."

"Slide down?" Jack looked at him incredulously. "Daniel, are you nuts? This isn't Star Wars!"

"It's either that or eventually get mowed down by them!" Daniel pointed behind Jack, and Teal'c suddenly fired. Jack whirled to see two Interceptors go down in the entrance to their hallway. It slowed the others down who struggled to step over them. Jack fired, adding more bodies to the pile.

"All right, move it!" Jack ordered. These guys just kept coming.

Daniel pried open the door to the chute, and suddenly one of the Interceptors stepped out and stopped in the middle of the hall. Jack fired, but his clip let one burst out and then clicked empty. He swore, ejecting it and rapidly reaching for another one. The Interceptor raised his own gun, and Jack shoved Daniel to the floor and barked at Teal'c, "Down!"

Teal'c dropped and twisted, pulling Sam into a ball against him and shielding her with his back. Jack got down just as the darts began hitting the wall above them. The high-pitched whistle they made hurt his ears, and he fumbled around trying to find his extra clip. Teal'c yanked the empty gun from Jack's hands and shoved his own in its place. Jack raised it and fired as a dart caught Teal'c in the upper arm. It grazed his shoulder, flaying open the fabric and skin alike before embedding itself in the wall above Sam's head. Teal'c didn't even wince as the tatters of his sleeve turned crimson. He used his foot to kick open the door to the chute again, picked Sam up, and he disappeared into the big hatch, feet first.

Jack kept firing as Daniel stepped in after them, and then he followed.

\+ + +

**[ collapsing effect ]**

_Daniel_

The ride was slower than he'd expected. It wasn't a strictly vertical drop, but more of a decline. It felt they were sliding down for hours when he realized rationally it was probably only seconds. He hoped he wouldn't land on Teal'c or Sam. Or, well, anything sharp and stabby.

He could hear Jack's voice coming from above him, swearing a blue streak that sounded tinny and echoed in the metal of the enclosed chute. It took on a different timbre as Daniel suddenly entered open air and endured a brief free fall before landing hard on his ass and sinking deep into a loose but massive pile of wire and rubber. There was a glancing blow of something slamming into his shoulder, and a grunt of pain came from beside him.

"Jack?"

Violent swearing was his reply, and Daniel would have laughed if the situation had been less desperate. He floundered in the mass of wires and tried to swim his way out. A hand grabbed his forearm and yanked hard. He was pulled from the pile by Teal'c and slid down the side to the floor. Jack soon followed.

Daniel glanced around and then climbed to his feet looking for Sam. She was propped against a nearby wall, and although still unconscious, looked none the worse for wear. He knelt down next to her anyway and smoothed a hand over her bare scalp, touching the tiny red pinpricks on her temple where the connectors had been placed. He was worried about what she would wake up to. If her mind would be whole and untouched. That would be the worst sort of damage for her. He knew that intuitively because it was the same with him.

"Where now, Daniel?" Jack bent over to take a breather and looked up at Daniel with piercing eyes. Teal'c was giving his arm a cursory examination but didn't appear disturbed by it in any way. Daniel glanced around and then walked toward another door.

"Here."

The door opened to a flight of stairs, and he started down them. The others followed. The control room was on the bottom level. They'd gone down several levels when the sound of a door opening far above them came floating down. It was followed by the tramp of feet on the stairs. Many feet.

Daniel immediately began to hurry down the stairs, even before Jack's order came. Teal'c had a bit more trouble trying to keep his footing while carrying Sam, and as they reached the bottom and Daniel held the door for the rest, he offered to take Sam for a while if Teal'c was getting tired or his arm was growing weak.

"My wound is shallow," Teal'c replied. "I will carry Major Carter."

Daniel acquiesced with a nod and stuck his head in the stairwell to listen for their pursuers. They were still several levels up. He allowed the door to close and led the others down a short hall and finally into the control room for the recycling chute. They only needed to go through the hatch and down the narrow tunnel and get down the rope into the junkyard. As they ran across the floor though, Daniel suddenly hesitated as he saw a figure walking along the outside edge of the room. It was Bit.

"Jack!" Daniel called, pointing to the man.

"What the hell is he doing in here?"

Daniel felt a suffusion of guilt. "He must have followed us in." He swerved off the path toward the hatch in the floor and approached Bit instead. "Bit… you have to come out with us now."

Bit smiled for the first time. "You found a way back in!"

"No, it's not a way back in. Not like you're thinking. The Interceptors are coming after us."

"The Interceptors?" Bit frowned and looked concerned.

"Daniel! We don't have time. Let's go!"

"Jack, we can't leave him here!"

Teal'c was already starting down the hatch, and Jack gave Daniel a look of impatience. Daniel didn't budge.

"Go over and activate the chute. I'll get Bit," Jack finally ordered him. He jogged quickly over to them, and Daniel ran to the control panel, throwing the lever. The vibration and screech of the chute opening filled the room. He turned as the Interceptors suddenly rounded the corner and came piling into the room. At the sight of them, Bit panicked. Daniel was too far away to hear what Jack was trying to tell him, but it didn't work. Jack then tried to simply grab him and drag him toward the hatch, and Daniel quickly brought his weapon up and fired at the Interceptors, trying to give them covering fire.

The darts were whistling in the air, and Daniel crouched as he ran for the hatch. Ahead of him, Jack almost had Bit to the opening, when Bit jerked back and ran for the main hallway. Daniel shouted at him, feeling a cold dread in his chest. "Bit! No!"

The darts cut the panicked man down. They sliced into him and some of them went completely through him and into the wall behind. Daniel felt his heart drop. There was no reason…

Daniel fired toward the Interceptors, trying to reach Bit's prone form, but Jack grabbed him and herded him toward the hatch. "Forget it!"

"He might be okay!"

"He's not, Daniel. We have to get out of here!"

Jack wouldn't leave him, and Daniel knew it. He dropped quickly down the hatch and onto the floor of the tunnel below. Jack dropped down after him followed by a clatter of darts ricocheting off the hard steel lip of the opening and into the tunnel.

Teal'c was opening the far door to the main chute, Sam clutched against his side. Daniel ran toward them, hearing Jack behind him. They eased out awkwardly onto the ladder beside the rope, and Jack closed the door behind them. There were thumps against the metal mere moments after.

"I'll jump," Jack said between gritted teeth. You'll have to lower Carter down to me. We only have a few seconds."

"There is no time," Teal'c replied, and he wrapped both arms around Sam and stepped off the edge, letting himself fall feet first into the pile below. Daniel felt his breath catch, and he stared down, watching as Teal'c hit the pile, sank in up to his knees, and then twisted around so he fell backward, Sam protected and on top of him.

"Go!" Jack said, placing a hand on his shoulder. Daniel jumped and Jack jumped with him. He hit and fell forward, rolling down the side of the pile and feeling several small, sharp pains digging into his back. He ignored them and climbed immediately to his feet, the world righting itself again.

Jack and Teal'c were both dragging Sam along between them, heading for one of the exits. Daniel ran around the pile toward them just as one of the Interceptors jumped down on top of the heap and began firing at him. He put his head down and ran for all he was worth.

\+ + +

**[ insurgent ]**

_Jack_

The trucks rolled out soon after they hit the street. Jack was worried about the thermal imaging or whatever sort of vision the Interceptors had installed in their helmets. The church wouldn't prevent them from being found in that respect, and he didn't dare hide them behind a simple energy transformer again. He was pretty sure the search this time would be much more thorough.

The few Interceptors that had braved the jump to the junkpile to follow them had been easily taken out of the picture with a few well-aimed shots as they exited the yard, but Jack knew there'd be a whole lot more swarming the city soon.

"We need someplace to hide," he panted as they ran, sticking close to the walls of the black buildings. We need to stay away from the church or it'll be useless to us after today."

Daniel's voice suddenly came from the back. "Bit's place. The shelter he showed me might be okay. It's underground."

"Lead!" Jack ordered, dropping back behind Teal'c to pick up the rear as Daniel ran up to take point. Daniel led them toward the church and then suddenly veered away on a trajectory toward Bit's house. They had to slow their run to a jog as they ran past the long, narrow buildings completely encased in metal. They could hear the trucks at the other end of these buildings, and sometimes had to wait for a crew to pass on the other side before running through the gap to the next.

The day grew darker quickly, and eventually they came to the row of old, battered houses that Bit had called home. Daniel passed by and entered a house a block over. They thundered down the stairs into the basement, and Daniel pried up a piece of scrap metal on the floor to reveal a trap door.

Jack glanced at it nervously. "Is there more than one entrance and exit?"

"Of course," Daniel replied, sounding a little indignant. "What use would it be as a shelter if it didn't?"

Jack shot him a dry look, but was a little proud of the guy. He'd come a long way over the years. Jack liked to think he was responsible for some of that. They climbed down into the hatch and Daniel used the flashlight to lead them down a long, ancient tunnel. It was dirt and stone and supported with wooden beams that made Jack wince a bit. Some of them were rotting away, and he didn't trust the integrity of the ceiling.

At the end though, they walked through a door into a vast chamber. Stacks upon stacks of crates and boxes filled the room. Shelves lined the walls, and Jack saw preserved food, clothing and other things he had no idea about. The floors were littered with scrap and dusty odds and ends. More junk. They walked through until they found a smaller room with pallets. Daniel grabbed some of the clothing and found a few blankets to spread out so they could lay Sam down.

Jack and Teal'c took a walk to find all the exits and get the layout in their heads. There were numerous rooms. Many of them for sleeping, some simply strewn with long-petrified garbage. There were two doors on the main level, but they found a second level, deeper, where several tunnels seemed to converge. They all seemed to have seen no use for years. That was reassuring at least.

Teal'c took up a post there in case the Interceptors knew of the tunnels and had only been ignoring them for lack of reason the past few years. Bit hardly seemed a threat they'd have worried about. Until he met SG-1, of course, Jack thought with a wince.

Jack set himself up in the main level between the two doors, occasionally sticking his head into the tunnels to listen for intruders. Daniel stayed with Sam.

As the hours crept by, Jack began to relax a bit. Daniel brought him a ration bar, and said Teal'c had heard nothing yet. He'd gotten Sam to take some water, but she was as mindless as he'd been when Jack had disconnected him and dragged him back to the church.

Jack hoped she'd recover just as fully as Daniel had. They'd need her brain to get out of here, and he really couldn't think about the possibility that she might be lost to them. That was unacceptable right now. None of them were expendable in his eyes. Never were, never would be. Ever.

He settled back to wait again. The long night was soon over, but the long day had yet to begin.

\+ + +

**[ piety ]**

_Teal'c_

The balcony on the church was a favorite place to be alone for each member of the team. They all knew this, and therefore some privacy was afforded there. If you ventured out without telling the others, you could be assured that no one would join you for a while at least. Teal'c liked that. He appreciated it. He was not a talker by nature, even when he still lived with his family back on Chulak. He preferred to listen and watch and consider everything around him.

He stood to one side of the balcony on the night watch and listened to this planet that had captured them so easily. That low-level hum that permeated everything made his senses prickle with warning again and again. He disliked it immensely. It felt cold and hard and evil.

They'd left the shelter the night after rescuing Sam from The System. He and O'Neill had ventured out to see what was happening, and all had been quiet. They'd remained undiscovered. There'd been evidence that the Interceptors had come inside of the row of battered houses though, so Jack had decided that they'd remain in the church, which had been untouched, doubtlessly because they had not been there to find.

Teal'c liked the church. It was possibly the most defensible position in the city with its location on the hill. They could see the enemy coming long before he arrived. They weren't waiting underground for a surprise.

It had been two days since the rescue, and Sam had most definitely turned the corner and was getting better. She'd been unconscious for another 12 hours after they'd moved her into the church, but since then had slowly regained her faculties and her memory. In fact, Teal'c's had been the first face she'd recognized in her brief and drowsy periods of lucidity. Teal'c had felt a warm wave of affection when she'd said his name and her eyes had focused clearly on him. O'Neill had been a little put out that it wasn't him, and Teal'c had not been able to hide his amusement. Or so he'd thought… none of the others had seemed to notice, even when looking directly at him.

Humans.

They all eagerly awaited her return to health, and Teal'c knew that O'Neill was basing most of their hopes for escape on her. It was a difficult burden that Sam and Daniel shared on SG-1. O'Neill had every reason to rely on them for miracles. They'd delivered time after time. But Teal'c could see the pressure in their eyes and the pain they both endured when they failed. He wished he could spare them that, but they all had their jobs to do, and the defense of Earth, the freedom of the Jaffa, would not wait.

He ducked through the hole in the wall of the church and walked silently back into the loft. O'Neill had felt that they needed to post a guard for a few days to make sure the Interceptors were done with their search, and Teal'c had concurred. They'd gone back to the shelter and brought back some of the more appetizing food and a few of the pallets.

For the time being though, Daniel slept with Sam on the big pallet. She was much better and staying awake for longer periods of time, but the withdrawal from the mind control had been painful for her. Teal'c stood over them as they slept side by side, Sam softly snoring into Daniel's shoulder. The two of them could find comfort in each other where O'Neill and himself could not.

He called them Sam and Daniel in his mind. He knew they would both be pleased to hear him use the names out loud, but that he could not do. Not yet. He called Sam by her rank because she had earned it in front of his eyes and he granted her that honor. He called Daniel by his first and last name out of respect for the archeologist's father who gave him his surname and was so missed by the young man. When the wars were over and the rank and protocol could be dropped, he would do so and hope they'd still be as honored to have him use their more familiar names.

Until then…

He stepped over O'Neill's prone body, hearing him snort in his sleep. O'Neill was simply O'Neill to him because they understood each other. Brothers in arms. He could never be anything less than simply "O'Neill". It was a name with power in the universe these days.

Teal'c was satisfied that his adopted family slept well. He returned to the balcony and lowered himself to rest on his heels as he stared out across the black landscape. They would escape and return home. Of this he was certain.

O'Neill had told him so.

\+ + +

**[ revive ]**

_Sam_

Sam took a bite of the ration bar and then set it back down as she opened the odds-and-ends kit. The small metal box was battered and even had scorch marks across its side, but it had saved their skins more than once in the past and it wouldn't be retired until it actually fell apart.

The roof of the old church creaked suddenly and she glanced up into its shadowed depths. The guys wouldn't be back for a while yet, and although she knew no one was there, she moved the P-90 a little closer on the table.

She was still suffering some fatigue and confusion. Effects from the total mind control of The System. For the most part though, she felt as if she'd just awoken from a long, deep sleep. Her body ached from atrophy, her brain stumbled as it revved back up to speed, and she spent long moments staring into space as she tried to sort the memories of her servitude in her mind. The colonel said she'd been out, off and on, for nearly three days after they'd carried her out. It was almost five days after she'd woke for good now, and she was finally starting to feel more normal.

She took a needle from the pack they kept in the odds-and-ends kit, and then took the magnet from its box. In the cloudy light from the big stained glass window, she carefully stroked the magnet down the length of the needle repeatedly.

Her first day or two back were sort of a blur. She'd been full of information, and still was, but Jack had been merciless in his demand for intel. She'd tried to give him what she could because she knew it was important, but her mind had been such a jumble… It had pained him to see her like that, she could tell, and he'd had to walk away from her several times to cool down before he commanded a meaningless mission against an enemy too vast to beat.

"It's a computer," she'd told him, trying to decide how best to explain it all. Daniel had also been hooked in, but he hadn't been in The System itself, and he had a harder time recognizing all he'd seen. It was much clearer in Sam's mind.

"What do you mean… it's a computer? What part? The part that you were hooked up to?"

"I mean all of it," she'd said grimly. "This whole city. It's all one big computer."

"Jesus… " Daniel had stared at her from across the table. "All of it? I thought maybe a hive mind of some sort."

She'd screwed up one half of her face in thought. "Sort of… but in a hive mind all the members are conscious of the others' thoughts. Not so with this. Here, we were all hooked into the central consciousness and it gave us programming and told us what to do."

"What exactly did you do?"

"I fixed code."

"What does that _mean_, Carter?" Jack was supremely frustrated, and she didn't blame him.

"Look," She'd sighed and laid her hands on the table top. "'The System' is an accurate description of this thing. It's a sentient computer entity. It was likely made by humans, but I don't think it's run by humans anymore. Somewhere along the way, it learned to grow and run on its own and use humans to achieve its goals."

"Which are?"

"To survive and expand. That's it."

"Stay alive and reproduce," Daniel had said, meeting her gaze. "That's the prime instinct of any life form."

"It's not alive if it's a computer!" Jack had barked angrily.

"It's not evil, sir," Sam had said gently. She was used to his outbursts and knew that both her and Daniel could push him much further than anyone else would be allowed. "But it does consider us expendable. We're of no consequence to it other than as a resource. It doesn't recognize life or the right to exist for anything except itself. It doesn't even understand the concept. I think that qualifies as an 'us or them' situation."

Jack had stared at her. "So, how do we stop it?"

"Stop it?" She'd been surprised. "We can't. It's huge, sir. I don't think you realize the true scope of what has been created here. This is a computer that has enslaved humans and expanded, at least somewhat, across a planet. The sheer amount of code that was required to run the minute-to-minute operations was staggering. All I did was fix code and write new code so that things would keep running and it could survive."

"Power," Jack stated. "It has to run on power."

"Vast amounts, yes. The shield that covers the city would require a huge amount by itself."

"We could just unplug it."

She'd smiled at him, and his jaw had tightened in response.

"One of the sub-systems was named Power Field, but I have no idea where that'd be or how it generated enough energy to keep itself running. I doubt it'd do much anyway. There are back-up systems."

Jack had glared. "How about that building we found you in? That thing you were hooked up to? We find something explosive and we blow it to hell."

"No! That's The System's master block!" She'd been so alarmed, she'd reached out and grabbed his sleeve to make sure he paid attention. "Colonel, the stargate is in there!"

Being at one with The System had left an indelible map of parts and programming in her mind, and that included the knowledge of the stargate, deep inside the The System's master block.

"How the hell did we get sucked into this anyway?" Daniel had asked. "I barely remember even coming through the stargate. Shouldn't the MALP have detected some of this?"

"No. The gate was in a shielded, enclosed room. When we sent the MALP through, it showed this, but nothing else. General Hammond still thought it was suspicious except that then the MALP started relaying a code back to us that was being broadcast at the gate."

"What manner of code?" Teal'c asked curiously.

"The most readily recognizable kind," Sam had answered. "Mathematical."

Jack had waved his hands impatiently. "I don't care how we got here anymore. I want to know how to get home!"

Sam had thought about that. "I don't know, sir. It's still a bit hard for me to think. Maybe in a day or two… "

It hadn't been what Jack had wanted to hear, but he'd given her shoulder a squeeze and ran his hand over the bristle of hair on her head in reassurance. "It's okay, Carter. Good job. Get better and then we'll get our asses home."

Sam had felt a rush of loyalty and affection for the man then. He pushed her hard when he had to, but he also knew when to step back and let her breathe. She wanted to give him what he needed to get them home. Maybe just a few more days…

Sam took the needle she'd just magnetized and tested it against the metal of the odds-and-ends box. It stuck readily, and she smiled.

She and Daniel had spent a lot of that first day talking and comparing notes. He'd told her what had happened so far with him and Teal'c and Jack, and how they'd disconnected her from The System and gotten her out of the master block. He'd told her about the Interceptors and the shelter and about Bit…

Bit, who'd survived being obsolete when no one else had. Bit, who'd given them food and information even though he didn't quite understand what was happening. Bit, who'd been shot by the Interceptors inside the master system block, and they'd had to leave him behind.

His body had appeared on the pile of junk in the recycling yard the day before.

Daniel had been angry and upset. Bit hadn't been dead long so it was likely he'd survived his initial wounds and expired later, perhaps after the Interceptors had interrogated him.

Today, they went to retrieve the body and find a place to bury him. Sam suspected Jack and Teal'c might not have bothered, but Daniel had needed the act of contrition. He felt guilt for leaving the man behind. Sam had not known Bit, but had felt sadness all the same. He'd survived so long, and he'd been so alone. Just cast out when he wasn't useful anymore. She could only imagine…

But her lingering fatigue had convinced her to stay behind and let the guys say goodbye in their own way. She needed the time alone with her thoughts anyway.

She pushed the needle halfway through a little bit of wood she'd chipped off one of the old fire pits down on the floor of the church. She took the shallow plastic bowl she'd found in the corner and poured an inch or so of water in it from the canteen. When she dropped the wood and needle into the water, it floated and spun and finally twitched back and forth for a moment before settling into a straight line. When she moved the dish or twisted it, the needle stayed firmly in its line.

Magnetic north.

Or… south.

Or a building that was exuding magnetic properties.

There was really no way to tell.

But Jack had moaned three times since she'd woken about his lack of a compass, and if she couldn't give him an escape plan yet, she could give him this. Useless as it was.

She heard a voice outside, and then the familiar sound of the door being pushed open on the main level of the church. Boots crunched over broken glass and rotten wood as the guys walked through the church and then up the stairs to the loft.

She watched them as they came into view. Teal'c greeted her with a nod of his head and then grabbed the container they used for water and went back down the stairs again. Daniel met her gaze without a smile, but she didn't expect one on this somber occasion.

"Hey Sam, how're you feeling?"

"Good," she answered softly. He gave her a faint smile and then disappeared through the hole in the wall and out onto the balcony. She watched the dark shadow of his body through the stained glass as he stood for a moment and then slid down to sit in the far corner.

Hands suddenly encompassed the top of her head and rubbed at the short, fuzzy hairs growing from her scalp. She stifled a snort of laughter and grinned. "Hey, sir."

The hands disappeared. "Hey, Carter. Feeling better?"

"Yeah." She turned to smile at him. The soft, bristle-stiff, new growth of her hair was a novelty to the rest of the team, who had only ever seen her with her blond hair styled and fashionably mussed. They'd started the fascination by staring at her scalp while she talked, and then Daniel had finally given in and rubbed her head with the palms of his hands, feeling the texture and the spiky softness and giving her a teasing grin. The colonel had apparently only been waiting for someone to start the festivities and hadn't wanted to be the first. They'd cajoled Teal'c into a cursory touch, but he'd frowned at them in long-suffering confusion. When they weren't looking though, she'd sometimes feel Teal'c's huge hand run quickly over the spikiness of her hair and she'd turn to find a glint in his eye.

It was to the point now where it was simply a part of their day and she barely noticed. She'd just go on talking as if there weren't hands rubbing on her scalp and pulling her head slightly to the side so she had to look up through the corners of her eyes at the person she was speaking to. Teamwork. You just wouldn't get it unless you'd been a part of it.

"How was it?" she asked tentatively.

Jack glanced out the window to where Daniel's dark form was standing on the balcony. "All right. We had to bury the body in the tunnels of the shelter. There isn't anywhere else to find bare ground. We tried to reassure him that he had no choice, but… you know Daniel."

She did. She knew.

"Hey, what's that?" Jack was looking curiously at the homemade compass on the table in front of her.

She gave him a faint smile. "Um, it's a compass."

He stared at her.

"Really," she protested. "I magnetized a needle and anchored it in wood so it would float and set it adrift in some water. That's all a compass is… basically."

Jack grinned at her. "Carter! You made me a compass?"

Sam felt the red rise in her cheeks. "Well, I mean, it's not really useful in a practical sense, sir. We know nothing about this planet and whether the poles are magnetized or are north south or whether the buildings in this city are emitting any sort of radiation or magnetism that would mess with it. Plus, it's not really something you can carry with you…"

Jack was leaning down and flicking at the floating needle with his finger, watching as it swung back to its original position each time. He gave her a sidelong smirk. "It's good to have you back, Major."

"Thanks, sir. Thanks for getting me out of there," she replied sincerely.

"Yeah, well… no one gets left behind on my watch. Besides… how else are we going to find the stargate?"

She smiled, but sighed. Frankly, she had no idea.

\+ + +

**[ communication ]**

_Jack_

When Daniel hadn't come in by nightfall, Jack took one of the ration bars out on the balcony.

"Hey," he said as he leaned against the wall next to the window and handed Daniel the ration bar.

"Hey." Daniel gave him a token glance and took the bar from him. Well, if Daniel was willing to eat it was a good sign.

"Daniel… " Jack began.

Daniel closed his eyes, shook his head and seemed to grimace a bit. "I know, I know," he said before Jack could finish.

"What do you know? I haven't even said anything yet."

"You came out to see if I was moping," Daniel stated, craning his neck back so he could meet Jack's eyes.

Jack eyed him grumpily. He really hated it when they read his mind like that. Especially when he went to all the trouble of preparing a speech. He slid on his back down the side of the wall and sat on the balcony next to Daniel, wrists locked around his raised knees. "I tried to get him, Daniel. He didn't want to go."

"It's not just Bit, Jack. It's all of them. They're not responsible for their own actions. We can't just start mowing them down."

"I think when they're chasing us with big dart guns, we can do a little mowing," Jack protested grimly.

"They're unwilling pawns," Daniel said quietly.

"We don't know if they're unwilling. For all we know this is something the people of this planet created on their own and entered into freely."

"They'd hardly need mind control devices then," Daniel pointed out.

Oh. Good point. Jack sighed, suddenly feeling a gigantic headache coming on. He leaned his head back against the stone wall and stared at the murky night sky. No stars at all. Ever.

"I'm just saying I'd like to get out of here with a minimum of carnage," Daniel explained. "These people are so dependant on this machine that they don't survive without it. They don't want to. They need to be taught how to live again and how to think."

"Daniel." Jack kept his voice low and gentle, but his frustration with the archeologist was growing. It wasn't even that Daniel made his job so much more difficult, or that he was so stubborn that he would never back down and just let Jack shoulder the burden of decision. Or… maybe that _was_ it after all. That Daniel wouldn't just let Jack make all the decisions and shoulder the regret. Jack was perfectly willing to admit that he sometimes preferred to just take the easy way out regardless of the consequences to himself. He was no stranger to guilt.

Daniel was the one who refused to let that happen. He was the one who saw guilt coming and warned of its advance. He was unwilling to let Jack slip back into that place, and he was downright bullish at the thought of Jack dragging them along. When Carter joined Daniel's side in an argument, Jack was pretty much lost. It irked him, but he'd learned to play through that. They'd rarely, if ever, been wrong. And he was silently grateful for the care to his soul, even if he'd never admit it or allow himself to dwell on it too much.

"We aren't capable of saving this planet right now," Jack said carefully. "We're barely keeping ourselves alive."

"I know," Daniel agreed, nodding. "I do know that, and, trust me, I do not regret giving up Bit if it meant saving Sam. I'd do that again. I just don't want to condemn the humans here en masse for something that they can't control. Maybe when we get back, the Asgard or the Tok'ra might know how to help…" He knew his wish was unlikely. Jack heard it in his voice.

"Maybe," Jack said. Hell, he didn't know. Maybe the Asgard _could_ return these people to their normal lives. In any case, he was pretty sure they'd want to know about a giant computer planet with plans to expand.

They lapsed into a silence for a while, and Jack thought that maybe somehow they'd come to an agreement. Somehow they always did, regardless of whether it was spoken or not.

As they stared at the darkness, several streaks of light shot across the sky, muted by the black cloud that enclosed the city. It reminded Jack of lightning flickering behind massive storm clouds, but it ran in a line rather than acting as a random mass.

"What the hell _is_ that?" Jack muttered.

"Lightning?" Daniel guessed.

"No rain."

Daniel shrugged. "Maybe that—" he waved his hand toward the sky "—shield of clouds prevents the rain from getting through. Maybe the rain would damage things somehow."

There was a distant rumbling as if to prove Daniel's point. When it grew increasingly louder and didn't seem to abate, Sam and Teal'c slid out onto the balcony with them.

"Holy… " Sam stared at the sky. Teal'c stood beside her, eyebrow raised high.

"Carter, what is that?" Jack demanded. He and Daniel climbed to their feet to stand beside her.

Sam glanced at him. "Don't ask me, sir. It looks like a storm or maybe something is going on with the shield itself."

That alarmed Jack. "What would happen if the shield gave way?"

Sam shrugged and shook her head. "Without knowing what the outside atmosphere is like, that would be impossible to say."

"Bad?" Jack asked, pushing.

"Could be," Sam replied, too enthralled with the light and sound show to be irritated by him. "If the shield is protecting the city from a toxic atmosphere or horrible storms."

The rumbling got louder and the cloudy shield lit up briefly like a flash bomb, and then it quickly started fading. In minutes, the rumbling had stopped and the lights were gone. Jack eased his fingernails out of his palm where he'd dug in as the rumbling had reached a frightening pitch and seemed to shake the city.

"Well, that was pleasant," he remarked sarcastically.

"Indeed it was not," Teal'c insisted, missing Jack's tone or choosing to ignore it. Sometimes you couldn't tell, and Jack gave him a tight, faint smile.

"Quite a storm," Daniel added, glancing sideways at Sam. She only gave him a look of agreement, eyes wide. It was obvious she was mystified, and that scared Jack the most.

\+ + +

**[ genesis ]**

_Daniel_

"Carter, what exactly are we looking for?" Jack was impatient. Again.

Daniel exchanged a small smile with Sam while the tables of junk still obstructed Jack's view of them. He stood with her, pawing through the contents of the table while she dealt with Jack. Neither Jack nor Teal'c liked the shelter much, and once Sam had recovered completely and lost the fatigue that had dogged her for so many days, Daniel had insisted on showing it to her. They'd immediately seen the possibilities in the sheer amount of scavenged gear and collected technology decorating the tables and shelves. They needed help to get home, and this was the most likely place to find it.

Sam responded calmly to Jack, her fingers playing over a gadget she'd picked up. "Anything that might help us to escape, sir."

Jack glanced around. "Which would be what? Exactly?"

Sam hesitated a moment to give an indulgent smile, her lips a little tight. "Well, I guess I'll know when I see it."

"Ah," Jack said, nodding in perfect understanding. Daniel winced a bit. A bored Jack was never good when one was trying to get actual work done. Jack glanced down at the table beside him and picked up something that looked like a wire whisk. He held it up. "How about this?"

Sam stared at him for a beat, and Daniel saw the heavy sigh in her body language. He blinked at Jack, in sympathy for her. Sam smiled. "Um, no, sir. I don't think that'd be very useful."

Jack waved it back and forth. "Well then, Major… you obviously have no taste for a good omelet."

Daniel shook his head, rolling his eyes at Jack's bad attempts at humor. Sam fought a smile though and seemed to accept that she was going to have to deal with him in order to get any work done. "An omelet won't get us home, sir."

Jack picked up something else. "How about this?"

Sam hesitated in that way she always did when she knew she had to say something that wasn't proper protocol. "Um… no. Sir? You don't have to stay here with us. Really. We'll be fine. If you'd rather go find Teal'c… "

Daniel smiled.

Jack lifted his brows and tilted his head just slightly. "Trying to get rid of me?"

"Oh no, sir!" Sam exclaimed quickly.

"Yes," Daniel said at the same time.

Jack's eyes narrowed and he glared at them indignantly. Daniel exchanged another glance with Sam. She was trying to hide a grin and having a hard time of it. Jack did his best to look flippant. He waved a hand. "Hey, I can take a hint."

He started to walk out of the room and then suddenly stopped and looked back at them sternly. "If you find any big, red buttons that say 'self destruct' on them… don't mess with them, okay?"

Sam came as close to rolling her eyes as she ever did when Jack was watching her. Jack was intent on getting his payback though. "Carter?"

"Yes, sir," she answered solemnly, nodding as she met his eyes. Daniel knew she'd do the full eye roll when Jack was gone.

"Daniel?" Jack turned his attention to him.

Daniel made a shooing motion with his hand. "Of course, Jack. The only buttons I'm going to mess with are the ones that say 'Don't Push This'. You know that."

Jack shot him a sardonic glance. "Funny."

When he'd disappeared out the door, Daniel turned toward Sam. "Was it?"

She shrugged and held her hand up, palm down, tilting it back and forth. "Ehhh…"

"Huh." Daniel sighed. Usually he came up with something better, but eating ration bars that tasted like tree bark was starting to grate on him.

\+ + +

**[ spatial environment ]**

_Sam_

"Hey, look at this." Sam lifted the helmet out of the crate and held it up so Daniel could see it from across the table. He studied it, drawing his brows together.

"It looks like the helmets the Interceptors wear."

Sam tilted it, looking at it from different angles. "It does. A bit." It was made of metal and it had some weight to it. It fit over the crown of the head with a thick panel in the front that fit in front of the eyes. There were small telescopic lenses coming out from the panel like some sort of weird robotic eyes. The bottom of the face would be free of encumbrances. Not for protection then. She turned it over and studied the inside. She could see wiring encased in plastic in the inside surface. Something stirred in her mind…

"What else is in there?" Daniel walked around the side of the table and peered into the crate beside her. He reached in and lifted out a bulky, metallic glove with foot-long wires extending off of the fingertips. He stared at it, tilting it back and forth so the stiff wires on the fingertips waved back and forth. "Very surreal."

Sam stared at the glove and then back at the helmet. "Daniel… doesn't all of this look familiar?"

He met her gaze and then glanced at the glove in his hand again. She knew he got it when he suddenly looked a bit sickened and he set the glove down on the table. "The rows of workers hooked into The System… "

Sam nodded and chewed at her lip thoughtfully as she examined the helmet some more. "Hmm." She lifted it and slid it onto her head somewhat awkwardly.

"Sam…" Daniel sounded uneasy.

"Give me the gloves."

"No."

She lifted the helmet just enough to see Daniel giving her a horrified look. "It's not part of the mind control device, Daniel. I think this is just some sort of virtual reality gear that allows access to the system but doesn't actually compel the user to do The System's bidding."

Daniel still looked concerned, but he reached in and pulled the other glove from the crate. "You don't know that for sure."

Sam let the helmet sit back down on her head, blocking her vision. She reached blindly for the gloves, and Daniel grabbed her hands one by one, sliding the gloves on her himself. "No," She answered. "But you can just zat me if I start going zombie on you."

"Ha ha."

She grinned and brought her gloved hands up to straighten the helmet awkwardly. She heard the wires tap against the top of the helmet. She stood there and waited.

"What's happening?" Daniel asked.

"Nothing," Sam heard the disappointment in her own voice. Maybe the batteries were dead, or it needed a separate power source.

"Well, maybe it has an 'on' switch," Daniel suggested. She felt his hands grab the helmet and he tilted her head from side to side as he examined it. "I don't see anything," he said. She felt him pressing randomly against the metal.

"Hold on," she lifted the helmet off carefully and handed it to him. Then she examined the gloves on her hands. They were made of metal and segmented to fit her fingers very closely. The wires that waved rigidly from each finger made her pause. Not so much wires as… antennae. She looked at the long wrist sections. On the left glove there was a small sliding piece. "There!" she said, holding up the glove so Daniel could see the switch.

He hesitated, glancing worriedly into her eyes for a moment.

"It's okay," she reassured him, even though she had no idea if it was really okay or not. His curiosity would get the better of him, she knew.

He slid the switch to its opposite position, and helped her put the helmet on again. There was an off-putting, heavy feeling of disorientation and then suddenly there were blue lights in front of her eyes and she was seeing a wall of numbers. "Holy Hannah… "

"What? What is it?"

"I'm seeing something." She brought her hands up and began testing the wall. The numbers bent and wavered as she pushed through them. She turned around. More numbers and now she saw a line along the side. When she pushed at it, the whole panel of numbers slid aside and revealed another. "Wow."

"What?" Daniel sounded exasperated.

"I think I'm in the system, Daniel. This is computer code!"

"Well, does it know you're there?" Daniel's voice was past concern now.

"I don't know. The whole system must be basically wireless. It'd have to be in order to keep this many people under control." She was moving panels rapidly now and taking a good look around. She felt Daniel steady her a few times before she ran into a table or the wall as she spun around to look at everything.

"Will it help?" Daniel asked her, squeezing her arm to get her attention.

Sam was so lost in the wonder of it that she almost didn't hear him. She grinned beneath the helmet toward his voice. "If anything is going to, it'll be this."

\+ + +

_Jack_

Jack opened the door to the shelter with a rivulet of anger in his gut. He was as glad as anyone that Carter had found the virtual reality device and seemingly a way to enter the system without being noticed, but she, and Daniel he might add, both still needed to sleep and stay healthy. They'd been messing around with the device all day today, and he'd specifically told them to be back at the church by nightfall.

It was well past now.

He walked down the hall carrying his pack in his hands, listening. He didn't hear anything, which concerned him a bit. The two scientists together working on a problem were usually so oblivious of their surroundings and yakking so much that he'd been tempted to tape their mouths shut from time to time to get any peace.

He walked through the main storage room and into one of the alcoves along the side where they'd cleared the floor and set up a perimeter so Sam could use the device and not trip over anything and break her neck. As he hesitated in the doorway, he saw her standing there, helmet firmly in place, hands moving occasionally as she studied some virtual file in front of her eyes.

Daniel was sitting on the floor amongst a pile of books and blankets, head tilted against the wall, fast asleep. His glasses were still in place on his face, one of his field journals and a bit of pencil open on the floor next to him.

"Hey!" Jack barked loudly, startling both of them so badly they jumped. He felt a small sense of satisfaction at that. Daniel jerked upright and straightened his glasses, staring up at Jack in surprise. Carter whirled around, one weirdly gloved hand coming up to push the helmet high enough to reveal her eyes. The antennae waved wildly from her fingertips.

"Sir!"

"What the hell did I tell you about coming home before nightfall?" Jack demanded, trying not to wince at how much he sounded like his father.

Sam and Daniel glanced at each other. Sam guiltily, and Daniel with a 'told you so' expression on his face. Daniel stuck with her though, licking his lips before giving Jack a faint shrug. "It's hard to know when it's night time when we're underground."

Jack had tried to force them to move their little operation to the church, but whatever signal the virtual reality device was receiving had gotten worse the further away they'd gotten from the shelter. He'd let them return to the shelter under the condition that they returned to the church by nightfall. Just in case…

"Did you think about walking outside and _checking_?" Jack felt at his sarcastic best.

"Sorry, sir," Sam said a bit sheepishly. "You wouldn't believe the information we've found though." There was excitement in her eyes.

"Really?" He might just forgive them. "We can get home?"

"Oh," Sam looked a bit guilty again. "No, not that. I found a group of files archiving the planet's history. Daniel and I have been going through it all day!"

"It's fascinating." Daniel nodded with a similar excitement.

"I'll bet." Jack wasn't done being sarcastic yet. They hadn't suffered enough for making him and Teal'c worry.

Daniel gave him an incredulous look. "Jack, this archive explains what happened to these people. It's like a log of events from ancient history to present day."

"So?"

Daniel looked irked. Good. "Do I really have to tell you the importance of learning the history of what happened here?"

"Will it help us get out of here?"

"Well… maybe."

"It'll help us understand," Sam offered. "And the more we understand, the easier it will be to find weaknesses."

Weaknesses. Okay, Jack like the sound of that. "Go on."

Daniel picked up his journal and shifted to his knees with eagerness. "Well, humans recorded the history for centuries and then entered it in this database where it was updated regularly in textual form. When the humans became incapable of doing this, The System itself continued to do it because it's in the programming." Daniel glanced at Sam. "I read a lot of the text myself, but Sam was the only one who could understand the computer's language for the later entries."

Jack made an impatient gesture with his hand. "Can I have the condensed version, Daniel?"

Daniel blinked at him and sighed. "Basically they built this huge computer about a century ago as a way of sharing information. They wanted to archive their history. As the archive grew, it became more accessible to the whole of their society. They archived each discovery and each science experiment. It became a huge database. Their technology started taking huge leaps forward in all the sciences because the information was readily available to anyone who wanted to experiment. As the computer technology jumped forward, they started to come up with ways to make it even _more_ accessible."

"Their original idea seems to be exactly what Daniel's first thought was. A hive mind type of thing," Sam interjected, but when Daniel picked it up again, she slid the helmet back on and went back to her exploring.

"Yes," Daniel agreed. "They couldn't quite get the technology to work right though. They went from having to hard-wire people into the database to a more wireless approach with receiving gear that they wore on their heads, but it didn't allow them to share ideas with each other. It only allowed them to receive information from the database. The human resources needed to keep the computer running and the archive updated were tremendous. This whole society sort of turned inward and became obsessed with building The System. That was the nickname given to the whole machine. They also wanted a guardian angel. They strived to make The System a sentient being."

"When did the mind control come in?" Jack asked. He opened his pack and pulled out two sleeping bags, rolled tight. He threw one to Daniel and began untying the other and laying it out. Daniel was on autopilot and he absently began spreading out the sleeping bag while talking animatedly.

"Several generations later. The system began to take on this sort of god-like aspect. It did everything for the people. It provided all the answers to their questions. It ran their utilities and defended the planet. They started neglecting the other sciences in favor of expanding The System in an effort to make their lives as easy and stress free as possible."

"And boring," Jack muttered. Daniel only gave passing acknowledgement to his comment.

"The admirable existence was to serve The System. They evolved in their coding to make it as self-sustaining as possible. Somehow, we're not sure how, things changed… and the people became slaves to The System rather than the other way around. They worshipped it. Being connected was on par with ascending to a higher plane. The problem was it needed people to help expand, and if they weren't doing enough on their own, it found a way to force them into service."

Sam was still standing and working with the virtual reality device, but she spoke as she listened to them. "The only thing they didn't really explore or conquer was space travel. They were too focused on The System."

Daniel nodded, helping Jack as he pushed the books out of the way and started rearranging the blankets to make a third sleeping pallet. "The whole city was reorganized and re-built to facilitate the growth and the comfort of The System."

"Comfort?" Jack stared at him.

"Heat and static electricity can destroy the delicate components of a computer, sir." Carter waved her hands in the air, moving panels. "And as the computer grew in both power and size, it released a tremendous amount of heat."

Daniel nodded again. "They built the heart of the computer underground and then covered it with a city made of heat-resistant, non-conducting metal. They didn't bother tearing most of the old city down. They just built over it. That's why we keep running into old tech beneath the new."

"Ya think?" Jack eyed him.

"The taller buildings that go up into the shield are actually fans used to blow the heat away from the central processing unit and the memory archives," Daniel said.

"What about the shield?" Jack asked, suddenly taking an interest.

"It's a strange mix of different chemicals and compounds, some of which are incredibly similar to the metal used on the buildings," Sam said. She turned toward them, the telescopic eyepieces fully extended and her antennae-ridden fingers held motionless before her. She looked like some weird, mutant insect-girl, and Jack grinned at her. "It's purpose is to protect the city from electrical storms and heat and to provide a better environment for a running computer. It controls the temperature to a certain extent and it keeps the humidity low."

Daniel looked at Jack. "The system doesn't know right from wrong. It just follows its central programming. Survive and expand. Eventually, it used up all the planet's resources. At least within a reasonable area. There is very little mention of any other cultures on this planet, and I don't think the rest of the planet is very hospitable to human life. They had to just stop building once they ran out of materials."

Well, that explained the church and the shelter and why there were rows of ancient houses where the city simply stopped.

"So it can't expand anymore," Jack stated. He felt relieved by that.

"Um, I wouldn't say that," Sam suddenly said, lifting her helmet off and looking at both of them.

"What?" Daniel asked.

"Some of the last entries put in by humans were about developing space travel. They wrote programs and had started simulations just before succumbing to the mind control. The computer has been working on it all this time."

"It wants off the planet. It knows it has to find a new home with new resources to expand," Daniel said pensively.

"It's building a space ship?" Jack asked, just a little sarcasm and disbelief in his voice.

Sam looked at him. "I don't think so. It doesn't need to build one if it can capture one another way."

"How?"

Sam drew her brows together with a worried frown. "That storm we saw the other night, you said you've seen lights in the sky before like that?"

Jack nodded. "Yeah, a few times. I didn't hear that rumbling and feel that shaking, but the lights are pretty frequent."

"I don't think that was lightning, sir." Sam swallowed. "I think it was long-range anti-aircraft fire."

Jack stared at her, dread settling heavily in his gut.

"Oh my God," Daniel whispered.

"Wonderful," Jack said. "Just wonderful."

\+ + +

**[ corrosion ]**

"Why don't they just use the stargate?" Jack asked as he stretched out on the bedroll he'd made of blankets and slid his hands beneath his head for a pillow.

Sam was unlacing her boots while sitting on the sleeping bag to his left. "Well… " She frowned. "Maybe it tried. I suppose that once the human workers go through the gate, and the gate shuts down again, the signal is cut off. The workers would no longer be under the mind control. Worse, they'd be cut off from the database. These people have been under control for so long that The System has to tell them everything. Only the most basic and unconscious human behaviors are still independent. Breathing and moving and sleeping."

Daniel's voice came from the other side of Jack. Jack had separated them, knowing they'd never get any rest if they were within whispering distance of each other. "I didn't see much reference to the stargate in the archive either. It may have been a fairly new discovery before the mind control took over. The system may not fully understand the purpose of the gate."

"Well, it is broadcasting an intelligent, repeating code toward the gate, Daniel. It seems to at least understand that people can come through the gate _to_ this world."

Daniel suddenly sat up. "But that fits, Sam. These people have lost the ability to reproduce. There have been no pregnancies or births since the mind control began. At least none that have been recorded. And everyone we've seen so far has been at least 30 years old or older. As workers grow old and die, The System can't replace them. It would _want_ more humans to come through the gate. It could easily have learned how to lure people here and then immediately neutralize them and press them into service."

"Another reason to shoot down a ship or two. It would have enough materials to build an entire space ship around itself… and it wouldn't need a big human crew. It could find another planet. A bigger one with more humans and more natural resources."

"And then it could expand like crazy."

"Exactly."

Jack sighed. "Hey! This is all very ominous, I agree, but it's late and I want to sleep."

Daniel looked down at him, glasses glinting in the darkness. "Jack, this is what we've been looking for. We finally understand what happened, and Sam has access to the system. We can make plans now."

"Can we get off this rock tonight?"

"Well, no. Of course not."

"Then I want to go to sleep. And you two are going to lay down and be quiet and go to sleep too."

"But, sir…" Carter started with the protests too.

"Or else I will _shoot you myself right now_!"

There was blessed silence. Jack settled down and stared at the ceiling of the shelter. His scientists tossed and turned and fidgeted for a while and then gradually slipped off to sleep, one after the other.

Jack stayed awake for a long time. He'd never wanted a beer so much in his life.

\+ + +

**[ lines of reason ]**

Carter found maps the next day. Detailed, perfectly scaled, three-dimensional maps of the city and the buildings and everything in between. She could twist the images to look at them from any angle or fly through the buildings and see every layer of construction. She could see maps of the energy signals and output for every level of every building. Jack put the helmet on to take a look and promptly took it off again and handed it back to Sam.

"It's been 15 years since the last time I threw up due to motion sickness. I don't intend to start again now."

Sam had blinked at him and raised one brow. He'd given her burgeoning crew cut a quick but thorough rub, and then walked outside to see what Teal'c was up to.

When he'd wandered back inside to see what progress she'd made, Daniel was in the virtual reality get-up and there was a hologram of a map filling the room. Carter walked around within it looking amazed and excited. Jack could practically see the gears turning in her head.

"Holy crap," he said.

Carter whirled and smiled at him, and Daniel turned his head, tilting it and the helmet back so he could look out through the bottom. The hologram wavered.

"Jack, we think we've found something!"

"Let's hear it." Jack refused to let himself feel too excited. The words, _We found something!_ coming from these two could easily mean, _Ooh, pretty science things!_

"We found a detailed map of this shelter and of the tunnels below. One of them leads to something called the Power Field, and Sam thinks it might be the power source for the entire city." Daniel started gesticulating rapidly as he talked, and the hologram pitched back and forth, flickering madly.

"Daniel! Stop fidgeting, you're giving me a headache!"

Daniel glanced at the hologram and then at his antennae-laden hands. He lowered them to his thighs and pressed them there. "Sorry. We really need to go take a look at this thing though. The entire system must need tremendous amounts of energy to run. It's possible we could knock out certain parts of the programming through the power field."

"How far away is it?"

"About five miles, sir." Sam told him. "Underground, of course. It looks like the actual power field is outside of the city."

"Outside, like outside of the protective shielding?"

"Yes sir."

Jack mulled this over. "T and I can take a look."

Sam held up a hand. "Ah, you don't know everything yet, Colonel."

He made a 'go on' motion with his hand.

She glanced at Daniel with a conspiratorial look. "Show him the stargate."

The stargate? Okay, now he _was_ starting to feel excited. Despite the fact that Carter had known which building the stargate was in, she hadn't had any memory of its exact location or how to get there. Jack was pretty sure their good luck, if you could call it that, was running out, and they wouldn't be able to just waltz in there time and time again to search for the stargate. Not without being shot full of darts anyway.

Daniel made a few side-to-side motions with his hands and a tall, narrow hologram appeared. The schematics of a cylindrical building.

Jack stared at it. "Is that the building where you two were being held?"

Sam nodded. "Yes. And look down at the bottom."

Jack scanned down the building, noticing a level toward the bottom where there seemed to be a mass of swirling lights. He squatted down on his heels and studied it."

"That's the level where you found me," Sam explained, walking around to hunker down beside him. "It's where the original computer was built and held. Basically its BIOS chips and CPU are housed there along with all means to control peripheral agents."

"Carter…" Jack warned.

"The system's brain lives there," she amended.

"You couldn't just say that in the first place?" Jack grumbled.

She flashed him a grin. He liked that grin. It was a genius grin, and it meant her brain was in turbo. She pointed below the brain level to the very bottom space. Jack saw several dense rooms of lights and in the very middle was a glowing circle. The stargate.

"Sweet," he muttered. "How do we get there?"

Sam shook her head. "I'm not sure yet. There's no elevators that I can see that go down that far. I see one staircase… here." She pointed to a narrow, diagonal shaft running alongside the bottom level. "But that passes straight through the central processing room, and we'd be noticed for sure. The system doesn't care about or even see any agents that aren't emitting location pulses from the homing chips, or who aren't plugged into the central consciousness. That's why we could essentially move around like ghosts, unseen and ignored. But you disturbed that status quo by engaging the Interceptors, sir. It's labeled us as bugs now, or crawlers, and we'd be pursued as a potential threat once we're spotted and analyzed by the Interceptors. Our images and energy signals are listed in the archive as a dangerous virus."

"So, what are you saying? There's no way for us to get to the stargate?"

She shook her head. "Not exactly." She turned toward him with that expression on her face. The one that said he was in for another long explanation as she tried to educate him on something. "We can't get in through any traditional means, and I'm sure the recycling chute has been neutralized by now, but I think there's an entrance the system might have 'forgotten' about. I think it's possible because it's an entrance we've forgotten about ourselves with our own gate."

"Carter."

"This isn't the original location of the gate, sir. The Ancients didn't place it in that building. When this society found the gate, they had it moved here."

Jack's eye widened. "And they needed a really big door to get it in there!"

Sam pointed to a thin, rectangular shape running up from the gateroom. "They needed a really big door to get it in there," she agreed.

Jack studied it. "Where does it end?"

Sam indicated a big square area two stories above the gateroom. "This is at ground level. It's shape and size and the location make me think we're looking at some sort of… garage."

"The trucks," Jack said. "Those trucks have to come from somewhere."

Sam nodded, eyes glittering. "Yes! That has to be it, sir. And it makes sense. The room would have to be big enough to slide the gate through in order to reach the shaft."

Jack slid his gaze from Sam to Daniel and back again. "I knew there was a reason I rescued you two."

Sam glanced away from him with an embarrassed smile, and Daniel lifted the helmet to look at him as if he were made of feathers, but Jack knew exactly how to read them. _Thanks, Jack. We love you too._

"Sir, I think Daniel and I should check out the power field while you and Teal'c recon the garage and The System's master building."

Jack hesitated. "Carter, we have no idea what's outside of this city."

"I know, but I think it's doubtful there's much of anything, and neither you or Teal'c is going to know which circuits to selectively disable."

That was true. Realistically speaking, sneaking around the building where The System's brain was housed was going to be trickier.

"Okay," he gave his assent reluctantly. Carter was a tried and true combat soldier after all. "We'll head out tomorrow morning. Recon only!" He pointed a finger at them. "You two take full packs, MOPP suits included. I don't care if it's only 5 miles away, I want you prepared for anything. Carter, you go over every inch of those MOPP suits. Who knows what they've been through since we got here."

"Yes sir." She was eager and raring to go, and headed immediately back to the church to go through their packs.

Jack watched as Daniel removed the virtual reality gear and set it carefully into a small pack they'd found in the shelter's supplies. "Hey," he called quietly. Daniel turned to look at him. "I know this is like telling both the pot and the kettle not to be black, but could you please keep an eye on each other and _not_ get so caught up in your work that you don't see the big alien coming up behind you?"

For once Daniel didn't offer sarcasm in return. He smiled faintly, blue eyes piercing deep into Jack's worry. "Yeah," he said, nodding. "We can do that."

\+ + +

**[ spiral out ]**

_Teal'c_

Teal'c braced his legs and watched the rain of garbage from the chute. He stood on the side of the junk pile, just outside of the impact area. O'Neill stood a few feet to his left, neck craned upwards to look up the chute.

A few stray pieces of garbage were easily deflected by Teal'c's forearm, and then the rain slowed and stopped. Both of them took several struggling steps up to the top of the heap and looked up into the chute.

"It looks the same," O'Neill stated.

Teal'c studied the inner structure with trepidation. Looks could be deceiving. If there was one thing he'd learned in the years since his service with Apophis, it was that gem of advice. He leaned down and picked up a small piece of scrap metal and tossed it up to the ridge where they'd caught the hook for their rope. It hit and bounced harmlessly away.

O'Neill glanced at him and then picked up his own piece of scrap. He threw it up against the ladder beneath the door that led within. It hit amid a shower of sparks. They both shielded their eyes.

"Electrified," Teal'c said.

Jack didn't appear surprised, but he looked grim. He picked up another piece of metal and threw it hard against the door. There was a sudden whistling amplified in the enclosed space of the chute, and several darts hit the door and stuck where the metal had touched.

Teal'c and Jack raised their P-90's, but a quick look told them the darts were automated and aimed toward the door.

"Ouch," Jack remarked.

Teal'c agreed but said nothing. They were not getting in by this means again.

The short walk to The System's master building was a quiet one, although O'Neill did occasionally let loose with a comment about how much he hated this planet and the city and how much he missed The Simpsons and how the first thing he was going to do when they got home was take everyone out for a huge steak.

Teal'c had grunted a non-committal reply. He usually did, except when Jack was really on a roll and then Teal'c had learned that he had to give some sort of verbal acknowledgement to the rant or Jack would only go on and on. Teal'c found it amusing that O'Neill would snap at Sam and Daniel for their seemingly endless techno babble, when O'Neill himself could be a tremendous pain in the ass from time to time. Especially on those rare occasions when he was right about something and knew it. Then they all suffered.

But they all put up with it, because they respected Jack. He was worthy of it. And they loved him. There was nothing that O'Neill wouldn't do for any of them, and they all knew it.

O'Neill pulled out a folded piece of paper as they got up close to the black surface of the master building. Sam and Daniel had spent the evening before drawing maps onto Daniel's journal paper from the holograms in the archive.

"Let's see…" O'Neill turned the paper around to orient it and themselves to the right angle. Daniel had marked it with the junkyard and the church so they could recognize which side of the building they were looking at.

"What are we looking for, O'Neill?" Teal'c slid his gaze up the tall building, studying the sides and then the dark, grainy sky above.

"Carter thinks there's a big garage here on ground level. Those trucks came from somewhere. We need to find it."

They began by simply walking around the building and looking at the walls. There were many indentations, and even obvious panels that were meant to open in some way, but nothing that was big enough to admit a truck, much less a stargate. It took them nearly an hour to circle around the building.

"Well, that was useless," Jack muttered.

Teal'c studied the building silently for a moment. "Perhaps not, O'Neill. We now know that it is not in an obvious place. Those trucks did come from somewhere…"

They walked the circuit again, and were nearly all the way around when Teal'c suddenly glanced down and stopped. "O'Neill."

"What do you got?" O'Neill walked back to him.

Teal'c stared down at the black, metallic surface of the ground and then pushed the toe of his boot through a light coating of black dust. It revealed a straight and narrow crack. O'Neill stared at it and then scraped at the area next to it with the sole of his boot. More of the crack was revealed. They glanced at each other.

"Sweet!" O'Neill exclaimed as they walked along the outline of the crack, scraping the dust away with their boots. Several minutes later they'd uncovered a large door in the ground next to the building. "Controls?" O'Neill asked, glancing around for something that might open the door. They looked but found nothing except a panel on the side of the building that, when opened, hid a series of ports that had to be accessed by the correct plug.

"Crap." O'Neill grumbled.

"Major Carter may be able to figure out how to open this door, O'Neill. It is very close to the room that Daniel Jackson marked on the map. I feel certain that this is the door we were looking for."

"Me too, but let's just take another walk around, and make sure, all right?"

Teal'c nodded. In fact, it would be wise for them to walk most of the area around this building and familiarize themselves with the layout. When the time came to act, he wanted nothing to surprise them. He wanted nothing to come between SG-1 and their home. He would do whatever it took to make sure nothing did.

\+ + +

**[ horizon ]**

_Sam_

The hike through the tunnel in full packs took not quite two hours. Neither of them rushed, but they were both in good shape despite their recent bouts with mind control and could easily handle a 5-mile walk without trouble. The floor of the tunnel was amazingly clear of debris, but with only one flashlight between them, it was hard to avoid the fear of tripping or wondering if the ceiling would suddenly dip down and they'd run into it face first. The air was still and dead, but it wasn't stagnant. Fresh air was leaking in from somewhere.

"Maybe we'll find an entire civilization outside of the city," Sam said, trying to make conversation more than anything. She didn't think they'd find anything of the sort, but you just never knew.

Ahead of her, Daniel snorted with amusement. "Jack thinks we'll find evil aliens."

"I thought we already found those," Sam muttered. She inadvertently tread on Daniel's heel and put a hand out to touch his shoulder. "Sorry."

"It's okay," Daniel replied absently. She put her hand on his pack and left it there to keep walking space between them and let him lead her along. He turned his head to glance back at her in the darkness. "They aren't evil, Sam. The system is just a computer, and it can't be evil."

"What about HAL 9000?"

Daniel smirked. "You've been talking to Jack."

"Well, it's a valid point."

"HAL 9000 was just trying to preserve its own existence."

"What about The Matrix?"

Daniel laughed. "Now you're just trying to get me going."

"Why not? Machines take over the world and enslave the human race."

"Do you think we depend too much on technology?" Daniel asked. His voice was serious, thoughtful.

"Maybe," Sam answered. She thought about it. It was true really. The human race based most of its science and evolution on technology. They bet their lives on it everyday. "The fact is, that technology is making our lives easier and longer, but some people argue that it's also taking away our ability to relate to one another. And everything that makes us human."

"Um, wow." Daniel sounded surprised. Not so much at what she said, but at the fact that she was the one saying it.

"I'm aware of the irony, Daniel. But I'm the one who sees the strides we make everyday. Sometimes I'm fascinated by the direction technology is taking, but sometimes I'm a bit uneasy about it too. It's by no means a sure thing to an easier future. Technology and computers run all of our major weapons systems. They have the ability to wipe mankind from the face of the Earth."

"You're not very surprised that this happened on this planet, are you?" He asked her.

"Not as much as I should be, I think."

They walked in silence for a few moments before Sam suddenly felt Daniel's hand fumbling back and grabbing for hers. She took it, oddly touched. He brought the flashlight up to show her his smile as he stopped and turned to her. "Well, then I'm glad we have a math genius on the team who can hack computers and knows how they think."

"They don't—"

He grinned. "I know, I know… I'm just saying…"

She grinned back.

He turned back and took a few steps forward before bringing the light around to bear on the path, and she heard him grunt as he suddenly ran into something. It was too late to stop herself, and she ran right into the back of his pack, letting out her own surprised yelp as they both bounced back and sprawled out onto the floor of the tunnel.

"Crap," Sam mumbled, struggling to sit up with the heavy pack on her back. Daniel lay on his back and shone the flashlight up ahead of them and onto a big metal door with a wheel mounted in the middle to control the lock.

"I found the door!" He exclaimed brightly.

Sam rolled her eyes and used his shoulder to lever herself up onto her feet. He took her offered hand and she pulled him up beside her.

"Think this is the end?"

Sam shrugged. "The distance seemed about right. Hard to tell for sure though. We'd better get into the MOPP suits before we try and open it though. The colonel will kill us if we're poisoned to death by the atmosphere."

She got another snort of amusement from Daniel with that one.

They shrugged their packs off and pulled the MOPP suits on over their clothes, tying down the ends and then examining each other for gaps or missed connectors.

The wheel on the door stuck fast at first. Sam tapped on it with the hilt of her knife, and they alternated the tapping to free dried rust along with both of them straining to push the wheel around. Gradually it began to move and then finally it slipped free and the bolts holding the door slammed open.

They both had to pull at the door to swing it open.

Light hit them first. Bright and startling and a little fear inducing. There was sand outside of the door, and then Sam saw grass. Daniel was already stepping through the door, and she quickly moved up to follow. And then she saw the sun.

She let out a surprised "Ooh" inside of her MOPP helmet. Daniel glanced back at her and held his zat ready. She brought her P-90 up and moved ahead of him, stepping away from the door. There were several small rock formations around the door, shielding it and providing the structure needed for its security. The sun shone in a blue sky and she felt the warmth immediately through the suit. When she glanced up and back she saw the dark cloud of the shield surrounding the city. It looked like a black dome with points sticking out of the top.

The ground was mostly hard-packed sand, but there were a few green plants. The plants seemed to indicate an atmosphere of oxygen and nothing toxic. Daniel tapped her on the shoulder. She turned and he pulled her up to where he stood, looking around the ridge of the door and out onto a plain next to the dome of the city.

She inhaled sharply.

The plain was covered in windmills. They ran in rows, hundreds of them. All of them turning busily, their blades glinting in the sun, and doubtlessly spinning rotors located below ground, driving the shafts of hundreds of electrical generators. It was an actual field of power. Holy Hannah.

A short slide down the side of the ridge they were on, and they were walking out onto the field. The wind was stronger here. The shelter of the ridge had protected them from its force. It sent their suits rippling over their bodies and tore at their helmets. Sam wished she had any of her equipment to take environmental readings. She thought that the atmosphere was likely safe, but anything dangerous in the air could possibly kill with one breath. She grabbed Daniel's shoulder and pointed at the grass growing around the base of one air-powered turbine and then at her helmet, indicating that she was going to take it off and test the air.

Daniel hesitated and then gave her a thumbs-up.

She undid the clasps and then slowly lifted one corner of the flap on the helmet. Air rushed inside and she breathed it in. It was fresh and clean. She grinned and pulled the entire helmet off, the wind immediately running through the short hair on her scalp. It was hot and dry. Daniel pulled his off too, reaching up to stabilize his glasses as the wind hit him.

"This is amazing!" he exclaimed, excitement in his voice.

"Wind turbines!" She said, nodding. "If the wind is always like this, the city has an endless supply of power."

"I have to admit," Daniel said, turning to look around them. "I didn't think the power field would be an actual field of power. I thought maybe it would be more like a bunch of levers like at the SGC."

Sam grinned. "Me too. God, can you feel that sun? It seems like forever since I've felt it."

Daniel looked up toward the sky and closed his eyes. She watched the sun hitting his face, pale and scruffy with beard. A sudden sobering thought hit her.

"Daniel, this isn't actually a good thing for us. There's no way we can take out all these turbines and interrupt the flow of power. Not to mention that it's likely diverted and allocated around the city in another location altogether."

Daniel met her gaze and sighed. "We don't have any explosives anyway, which is what it would take to destroy all of this. Let's take a look around."

"Keep your eyes open," Sam warned.

They walked along the nearest row of turbines, the wind ripping wildly at their suits. When Sam turned to glance back, she could see where the heat was being exhausted from the city. Shimmering, blurry waves of heat radiated upward above the dome. "I don't think this wind is completely natural!" she said, raising her voice to catch Daniel's ear.

He glanced back at the waves of heat and then at her. "You think they changed their climate by propelling all that heat into the atmosphere?"

She shrugged. "It's possible. Who knows what else is being exhausted? I think it's been happening for decades. If it wasn't the most stable planet to begin with…"

"Yeah."

They kept walking, and Sam was trying to keep a mental count of the rows of windmills, but she gave up after a few hundred feet.

When they stopped for a quick water break, the air around them was filled with a low moaning. They stared at each other, perplexed, until suddenly Daniel smiled and pressed the cap back on top of the canteen. The moan stopped. When he lifted it again, the moaning immediately filled their ears.

Sam grimaced. "Creepy!"

"I've witnessed the same effect at the tops of some Arizona canyons where I've gone to study Anasazi ruins. The wind intensifies at the rim. It's just like blowing across a jug."

She looked around them then. "How high do you think we are?"

Daniel shook his head, and they walked on. They were nearly to the end of the field. As they drew closer, Sam could see that there was some sort of cliff edge just beyond the last row. The rocks turned up a bit, so she couldn't see the drop, but she could see distant bluffs of dark rock and tan patches that she guessed were more plains of the light, hard-packed sand.

She scrambled quickly up the rock edge and slowed as the drop came into view and she realized how drastic it really was. Holy… the city was actually on a plain thousands of feet high! When she stood, she looked out over the vast desert below… and she stilled, paralyzed.

Daniel came up behind her, and she heard his gasp. One of his hands had come up to touch the small of her back as he'd approached, to alert her to his presence. Now she felt it grip the fabric of her MOPP suit tightly and he stood close to her, just as still.

The desert plain below was vast. As many miles wide as they were high. And scattered across that plain were the hulking wrecks of dozens of spaceships. Different sizes and shapes and in various states of destruction and burial, the desert floor was filled with them.

"Holy shit," Daniel swore beside her, his voice almost ripped away by the wind.

"This is what those lights in the sky were," Sam said softly, confirming her own earlier suspicion. "It's shooting ships down out of space." She pointed to one wreck in the distance, a slow, dark coil of smoke rising from the still-smoldering ruins.

"The lights and noise from the other night," Daniel exclaimed, and Sam nodded in agreement.

Some were long burned husks, black and red with rust and ash or buffed to a sharp shine by the soft sand blowing along the desert floor, propelled by the insane winds. Other wrecks were not so old, and they rocked in the wind, noses buried in brown drifts.

"How does it gain anything from this?" Daniel asked, glancing at her.

Sam shook her head, eyes squinting against the wind and the sun. "It must get something from them. Some living beings must survive and are taken as slaves. It would certainly want any technology it could get."

"There couldn't be much that would be in working order," Daniel insisted.

Sam shrugged. "No, but it needs a way to gain knowledge of new technology. Once the humans are connected to The System, they'd lose the ability for linear thought. They'd only do as The System commands. In order to learn and create new ideas and make progress, the human mind has to be free and unrestrained. This is the only way it can further its plans and the space program. The humans of this planet didn't go far enough before succumbing to The System."

"Jesus…"

Sam paused listening to the howl of the wind before she glanced at Daniel. "It must broadcast that mathematical message into space as well as through the gate. No matter the race, if they're technologically advanced, they'd recognize the code as a sign of life. Then they'd come closer to investigate…"

Daniel's eyes met hers sorrowfully. "And The System would shoot them down."

Sam nodded numbly and turned back to the graveyard of ships. She counted thirty before Daniel tugged at her hand, and they made their way back toward the door and the tunnel and the other half of SG-1.

\+ + +

**[ coagulate ]**

_Jack_

"So, we're right back to where we started, is that it?" Jack was a bit more snappish than he'd really intended to be. Frustration boiled in his gut.

"Well, if we can't get into The System's master building and we can't knock out the power… " Daniel shook his head helplessly. "We still have all the information and a way to get more, Jack. We'll find a way."

"It is possible we could create a disturbance, O'Neill. When the Interceptors come out, we could ambush them and use them to find another entrance."

Jack hesitated, glancing at Teal'c. "Not a bad idea. Those guys gotta have some sort of I.D. or keys or something, right?"

Daniel looked wary. "I don't know… Unless we have the locator chips or we're hooked in through the mind control, we could just be drawing unwanted attention."

Jack was getting punchy. He whipped his head around to look for Carter. She was sitting at the table, fingers absently picking at the virtual reality helmet. Her gaze was a million miles away.

"Carter?"

She didn't hear him, lost in her thoughts.

"Carter!"

Her head jerked up, and the blue eyes found his. "What?"

"What's on your mind?" He eyed her with hope.

She seemed about to speak and then shook her head. "I'm trying, sir," she said quietly.

Jack sighed and swallowed the biting remark waiting to get out. She _was_ trying. Both her and Daniel had been on endless duty since regaining their freedom, and Jack knew that if he'd had anyone else on the team, they wouldn't even have made it this far. He also knew that there was a time to pressure them and a time to let them rest.

"Get some sleep," he said calmly, giving her shoulder a squeeze as he made his way to his pallet. He sat to take his boots off and felt his impatience ease as he watched Daniel rub Sam's head affectionately, drawing a reluctant smile from her.

Scientists. Pains in the ass, all of them. But he loved these two anyway.

\+ + +

**[ recollection ]**

Jack was jarred awake in the middle of the night by Sam's hand planted in the middle of his chest and shaking him thoroughly.

"Colonel!" She whispered sharply.

He blinked up at her, still trying to get his bearings. He could see the light glint of blond around the silhouette of her head. "What is it?" he groaned, only vaguely concerned. He knew Carter's 'danger' voice, and that hadn't been it. If they were being attacked, she'd have had a different urgency to her voice, not to mention she wouldn't have been worried about waking Teal'c and Daniel.

She sat back on her heels next to him and whispered quietly. "There's an anomaly in the system. I remember now! I dreamed about it."

Jack had closed his eyes again, but he opened one and peered at her. "Carter, it is way too late, and I am far too tired for you to be pulling this scientist crap on me. I'm still half asleep, so how is that fair?"

There was a silence, and he had a feeling she was giving him some sort of long-suffering look. Probably the one that Teal'c had taught her. And then, "Sir, uncovering all this information the past few days seems to have jarred my brain some."

Oh, and he _so_ wanted to make a comment about that gem of a set-up, but he was too tired and grumpy, and she just went on without waiting for an answer anyway.

"When I was still hooked into The System, I remember coming across an anomaly that I knew could cause trouble in the long run. I had more important things to do at the time, so I re-routed the data stream to avoid that… spot. Then I locked it down with my personal code. I never went back to fix it because you rescued me before I had time. So it's still there!"

She waited expectantly, so Jack assumed he was supposed to find this information helpful and possibly exciting. "Sweet." He yawned. Why did scientists always find it necessary to wake him and notify him of every discovery?

He heard her give a little snort of disbelief. "Sir, this means that if I can find some way to connect back in with the system, I can possibly gain enough access to the code to give us some control over it."

Well, that was good! "Sweet," he said with a little more enthusiasm.

"I have a hunch about that panel you found near the garage door at the master building. I need to go back to the shelter and have another look around."

"Carter," he said, giving another yawn. "Did you really have to wake me for this?"

She sighed. "Well… no."

"Thank you," he exclaimed wearily. "Now I'm going back to sleep, okay?"

"Right," she said, sounding a bit apologetic. "Sorry, sir."

Jack flipped over on his side, facing away from her, and shifted until he was comfortable. "Good job, Carter. Get some sleep." He was back into his Mary Steenburgen dream before she could answer him.

\+ + +

He woke the next morning to find Carter gone.

"Damn it!" He growled the words as he shook both Teal'c and Daniel awake. "Where's Carter?"

Daniel glanced sleepily at the pallet next to his and then gave a little shrug. "Maybe she had to go."

"I did not hear her leave, O'Neill." Teal'c stood and walked to the edge of the loft to look down into the main body of the church. "She is not nearby."

Jack hesitated for a moment, not really wanting to go off on an angry search just to come up on her answering the call of nature. Then he remembered her words from the night before.

"Teal'c," he called, pulling his boots on and lacing them up. "I think she's at the shelter. Come with me just to be sure there's no problems."

The Jaffa gave him a nod and began pulling his own boots on.

"What about me?" Daniel yawned again.

"Stay here in case she isn't at the shelter and she comes back."

"Okay."

\+ + +

They were barely 1 block away when they saw her. Jack actually stopped in his tracks and stared, trying to figure out what the hell she was doing. She had the virtual reality gear on, and was standing closely to the wall of one of the long, black buildings. When they got closer, he suddenly realized there was a long cord connecting the helmet to the building.

"Teal'c! Get her out of there!"

Teal'c jerked her back from the wall as Jack grabbed the cord and yanked it from the helmet. "Carter!" He ripped the helmet from her head and glared at her as she stared at him in surprise, eyes wide. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Trying to gain access to the system," she explained as if it were obvious.

"Oh, for…" he fixed her with a dangerous look. "You're supposed to be the _good_ one! Not the one always running off on her own!"

"I told you what I needed to do last night, Colonel," she protested.

He fixed her with a superior officer's glare then. "Carter… you know damn well I expected you to wait until morning."

She hesitated but came clean. "I couldn't sleep."

Her acquiescence took the fight out of him, and he looked at the gloves on her hands and the cord lying on the ground. "So, did you get in?"

She grew more animated. "Yes! I didn't poke around much because I didn't want to give The System the idea that I was harmful, but it worked!"

"What worked?"

She took the gloves off and stowed them carefully in the small pack. "When you told me about the ports in the panel on the side of the building, I realized that I'd seen ports in the back of this helmet too." She showed him the helmet, and he saw two small, rectangular holes in the back of the helmet. She stowed that in the bag and then squatted down to pick up the cord. "Obviously their purpose was to connect to something or someone by hard-wiring."

"Obviously," Jack said, drawing a raised eyebrow and a doubtful glance from Teal'c.

"This get-up receives signals and data from the system, but it's incapable of actually interacting with the programming or the coding in any meaningful way. Unless it's hard-wired in. Everyone whose job is to change, compile or code for the system in some way is hard-wired in. Everyone else just has a wireless get-up. They only need to receive the signals."

"And?" Jack made an impatient motion with his hand. He wasn't in the mood for her long-winded explanations today.

"And I realized that I'd seen ports like this all around the city, so obviously plugging-in used to be quite common. I searched the shelter, and I found a few of the cords used to hard-wire users to the system. So, um, I gave it a try."

"What does this mean for us?" Jack asked, feeling a bit tight in the chest.

She smiled at him, and it was the most beautiful thing he'd seen in three weeks. "It means we can go home."

\+ + +

**[ hope ]**

They sat out on the balcony of the church on their last night. Jack brought out the last two MRE's and they shared the meal among the four of them, splitting the two Hershey bars with great solemnity. The chocolate felt like home, and Jack felt hope and dread at the same time. The plan they'd spent the past 24 hours working up wasn't infallible. In fact, it was based in simplicity and speed. It was all they had though, and Sam had warned them that The System was learning and expanding every minute, even if it couldn't build physically anymore. It would eventually realize they were there all the time and get rid of them.

They didn't talk much. The plans were set. Carter had spent the morning hooked to the system, with Teal'c guarding her back. She'd done little poking around, but enough to find the anomaly she'd remembered and to realize she'd signed and protected the bit of code with a personal technique and password that she'd learned over her years at the SGC. It was more complicated than that, but Jack had gotten a headache when she'd tried to explain it any further, and she'd shortened it to the lowest common denominator. Their gear was meticulously packed and double-checked by both him and Carter. He didn't need to tell them that this _was_ their last night here. They already knew. One way or another they would not be here tomorrow evening. They were either going home or, well, they wouldn't care anymore because they'd be slaves or dead.

He was hoping they'd be able to sleep tonight. He wanted a well-rested crew, but they'd performed under worse circumstances before.

He knew they were nervous because he'd looked up at some point during the evening to catch each of them casting a hopeful and considering glance in his direction. And that's the way it always was. It was them who came up with the plans, them who inspired such trust on Jack's part that things _would_ work out, but in the end, it was Jack himself who would have to be their anchor. And he could do that.

He met all of their gazes with steady eyes. _This WILL work because I will not let you die. Do you understand me?_

They did. They always did.

As the evening crept on, the lights started up in the sky. They watched helplessly as the glow of anti-aircraft fire streaked upward above the dome. When the rumbling started, and the shaking, and the bright flare of a falling ship lit up the city, Jack lowered his head. He saw Sam and Daniel slide closer to each other as they sat against the wall, arms touching. He heard their voices float out softly to each other in comfort. Teal'c stood stoically at the edge, witnessing the event. He'd seen worse.

Jack had too, but it didn't make it any easier.

His team did. They made it easier. Tomorrow he _would_ get them out of this.

\+ + +

They had debated creating some sort of distraction to draw the attention of the Interceptors. Sam could have disassembled several bullets to harvest the gunpowder and built a powerful little grenade that they could have thrown up into the recycling chute.

But Jack decided, and eventually they all agreed, that stealth was the better plan. The system didn't think like a human being. For the most part, it was unaware of their existence despite the fact that they had been labeled as viruses now. Sam thought it only did periodic scans of everything and everyone so they could still slip through the system like ghosts, unless they were physically spotted by an Interceptor.

Jack watched Sam connecting to the system by way of the panel next to the garage door in the ground. Teal'c walked back and forth behind her, P-90 held in one hand, barrel pointing up. Ready.

Daniel carried the only big pack they'd brought. Most of the equipment inside of it would be used and then abandoned. The GDO was safely in Carter's pocket; the odds-and-ends kit was tucked into a separate pack on her waist.

Jack was starting to get antsy when Sam exclaimed excitedly, "I'm in!"

He watched her move her gloved hands around, venturing further into the system. "How long is this going to take?" He knew exactly what her answer was going to be, but he asked anyway.

"Hard to say, sir."

Yep. Always was.

He and Daniel walked out a ways, checking things out. It was quiet. Except for that godawful hum that he'd grown to hate. "I should have had Carter make that homemade grenade. We could have gone down and stuffed it right into this thing's throat."

Daniel shot him a sharp look. "These people rely on The System to live, Jack. We'd be sentencing them to death."

Jack sighed heavily. He knew that. It was hard to tolerate because he had no direction for his anger and frustration. The planet as a whole seemed evil and alive. Maybe the Asgard would blow it to hell.

"O'Neill!"

He turned to find Teal'c with a smug smile on his face and inclining his head toward Jack. "What?"

"Major Carter has found the anomaly and is inside the CPU."

Jack hurried back over to them, Daniel at his heels. "Carter?"

"Sir, I can open the door right now, but I'll need a few more minutes to get control of the gate room. I'm going to have to basically lock the system out of its own controls. I'll protect it with a password, but the system is capable of trying thousands of possible password combinations per minute, maybe even per second. Once it notices the intrusion, we'll be on borrowed time."

"All right," Jack stated. He glanced up at Teal'c. "Stay with her until she's done. Daniel and I will get in there and clear the room."

Teal'c nodded.

Sam turned her head toward him, helmet restricting his view of her eyes. "Tell me when you're ready."

Jack glanced at Daniel. Daniel nodded and shifted his P-90, clicking the safety off. Jack tapped Sam on the shoulder. "Okay, Carter."

She made a few motions, and there was a sudden vibration beneath their feet and a slight groan of stressed metal. The door in the ground began sliding open, revealing a long ramp that declined gradually toward the building and disappeared underground. Jack squatted down to try and peer into the tunnel. He didn't see anything, but it was sparsely lighted. He motioned to Daniel to follow and stepped onto the ramp, easing his way down.

The ramp ended at a short tunnel and then opened into a huge garage. He'd been right in that this was where the trucks came from. They were all parked in neat lines across the width of the level. He signaled Daniel to stop and listen, and they squatted down just inside the garage, listening.

There wasn't even the tick of a cooling engine.

He glanced at Daniel and pointed to the right side perimeter of the garage, then he gave the signal for Daniel to move. They'd go opposite directions, sticking close to the walls, and meet on the far side of the garage, which was where the opening to the gateroom was according to the schematics.

Daniel nodded and moved silently off. Jack watched him for a moment and then turned to the left and moved quickly along the wall, pausing now and then to look and listen carefully. There didn't seem to be anybody in here, but you never took that for granted simply based on silence.

It took several long minutes to make his way around to the far end. He'd heard no suspicious rumblings or alarms, so that was a good sign. Daniel was waiting for him, hunkered down next to a row of vehicles that looked like motorcycles but without the gas tanks.

Jack got down next to him with a questioning look. Daniel shook his head. "I didn't see anyone."

"Me either." He glanced around, and then followed Daniel's gaze to a long, narrow metal plate in the floor. It ran away from them toward the center of the garage. Jack lifted an eyebrow. "Looks stargate-sized to me."

"Me too." Daniel studied the plate. "How do we get in though?"

They glanced around, looking for controls. There didn't seem to be any. Jack felt his frustration mount. There was no way they were going to tear up this plate by themselves. The bolts alone were the size of his thigh.

"Here!" Daniel called in a whisper. He'd walked to the center of the garage and stood looking down at the very end piece of the plate. Jack quickly made his way over to him. Daniel pointed to a small access door embedded in the plate.

Jack grinned. Yes! There was a small sound off to their left, and they both sank to their heels and brought their weapons up. Carter's shorn blond head appeared between two trucks, and she walked toward them, Teal'c directly behind her.

"Everything okay?" Jack asked when she was hunkered down beside them.

She nodded. "Yes sir, but with all due respect, let's get the hell out of here. It's only a matter of time before The System discovers it has been hijacked and starts to work on the password."

Jack couldn't have agreed more. He and Teal'c worked on prying the access door open while Daniel pulled a long length of rolled and braided cord from the pack. The door slid open reluctantly, and Jack shone the flashlight down into its depths.

The stargate stood there, just beneath them, and he felt something in his chest unclench.

Daniel handed him the cord, and Jack glanced around at his team. "I'm first, then Daniel, Carter and Teal'c." They already knew the order. Jack was just repeating it to make sure it went as planned. "Daniel dials P3X-678 and from there we gate home." They'd decided not to gate directly to Earth. Even though the system didn't appear to be interested in gate travel, they couldn't be sure, and they didn't want Earth's gate address flashed into its memory. It might already have it from their arrival, but it might not.

Jack dropped the cord, and Teal'c slid the other end around the front wheel of one of the trucks and secured it. Jack took a breath and then lowered his feet down into the shaft and climbed onto the cord. He eased himself slowly downward, trying to look around. They'd been neutralized in moments after coming through the gate when they'd first arrived. Something or someone had been waiting for them, and they couldn't be sure that something wouldn't still be there.

Carter shone the beam of the flashlight down past him, keeping its light off of his descent and trained on the area below him. The room was dim like all the others. It was very small, with only just enough room to contain the wave created by the forming wormhole. He crept downwards, and nothing happened.

When he hit the floor, he gave a quick look around. There was a single door in the wall, but it remained closed and silent. There was a suspicious looking device in the wall across from the gate, and Jack didn't like the looks of it. It was big and round and had a fine, black grating covering its surface. He threw a penny at it and nothing happened. They'd have to keep an eye on it.

He heard Daniel making his way down the cord above him, and he reached out to hold it steady. In moments, Daniel was standing on the ground next to him, and Carter was starting to lower her feet into the shaft. Jack held the cord and listened for anything unusual.

Instead he heard Daniel swearing. He jerked his gaze back to find Daniel circling the room in an agitated state. "Daniel?"

"It's not here!"

"What?"

Daniel shot him a rather wild look and tossed his hands in the air. "There's no DHD!"

Jack stared at him. "There has to be!"

Daniel motioned around the room. "Well, there isn't!"

Jack looked around, eyes scanning each nook of the room, each crack in the wall. "I thought the MALP showed a DHD before we came through! Carter?"

He glanced at her as she dropped down beside him, eyes wide. "It did, sir! It showed one to the left of the gate plain as day!"

They looked to the left, and nothing was there.

"What the hell?" Jack was growing anxious now.

"It must have been moved," Daniel stated. "Or maybe it just fooled us into thinking it was there and it never was!"

"Crap!" Jack gritted his teeth in anger. Well, this explained why there'd been no rescue mission from the SGC. He tilted his head back and glanced up to where Teal'c was getting ready to climb down. "Teal'c! Hold up! There's no DHD!"

"Are you certain, O'Neill?"

Jack glanced back to where both Sam and Daniel were now examining the walls again. They both looked helplessly at him. Jack glanced back at Teal'c. "Yes." Damn it! He glared at Carter. "What do we do now?"

She thought about it briefly, her gaze going to the door. "Maybe there's a control room like at the SGC."

"The maps," Daniel blurted. She looked at him. "We can go back up and you can plug-in and find the DHD. It has to be on the schematics somewhere. Its energy signature would be pretty unique, wouldn't it?"

Sam nodded. "Yes." She gazed at Jack. "That's really the best idea, sir. We don't want to waste time looking for it or fumbling into a roomful of Interceptors."

Jack swore under his breath. This was NOT going well now. He nodded and motioned for her to go up. She climbed onto the rope, and Teal'c pulled her up, then Daniel and Jack.

By the time Jack was standing in the garage again, Sam was at the far end, hooking into a port in a panel there. They waited nervously.

"Okay, here's the gateroom," Sam said, hands moving in the air, head tilted downward.

"Where is it?" Jack asked. "Is there a control room?"

Sam hesitated a moment and then tilted her head a bit more. "No."

"The longer we stay here, the more danger we face," Teal'c stated, a hint of impatience in his voice.

Jack tightened his jaw. "Thank you, Teal'c. Carter!"

"What the…" Sam was muttering to herself, head frozen in place as she studied something, hands moving deliberately and very slowly. She turned in a circle. "Oh no."

Jack's stomach lurched. He glanced at Daniel who didn't look well either. "What is it, Carter?" He asked with an almost tired reluctance. He did NOT want to stay on this planet one more day.

She pulled the helmet off and unplugged it from the wall. "The DHD isn't even in this building. It's eight blocks away in one of the memory warehouses." She began stuffing the gear into the pack.

"What?" Daniel stared at her. "How can it be that far away?"

"It's networked through the system," Sam said, eyes a bit sorrowful. "It's probably a way to prevent escape."

"Now what?" Daniel asked.

"We get our asses over there and dial the gate," Jack stated.

Sam immediately protested. "Sir, it's eight blocks. We'll have to get there, connect to open the door, find the DHD and dial and then get back and down to the gate. Once the gate is activated, the system _will_ notice. It will send the Interceptors after us and begin work on the password to regain control. And all of that won't matter if we don't get back within 40 minutes, provided the system's gate protocols allow it to remain open that long!"

Jack stepped right up into her personal space and locked his gaze on hers. "Well, what do you suggest, Carter? You just want to give up and live in a goddamn broken church for the rest of our short lives?" His words were clipped and angry.

She swallowed hard but held his gaze. Daniel and Teal'c were silent witnesses. "No sir," she finally answered quietly but firmly.

"Then let's do this. I want to go home."

She held his gaze a moment longer and then looked away, shoulders slumping a bit. He gave her arm a short squeeze in reassurance. She was frustrated, and she wanted to go home as badly as any of them did. She just came to her own conclusions too quickly. Her mind was all logical assumptions and orderly formulas. She was learning about chaos and the unpredictability of the human factor, but sometimes she slid back.

Jack was deciding whether to send Daniel or Teal'c with her, when Sam suddenly made a startled sound. "Sir!"

He turned to look, and she was staring at the row of bikes down the wall. She returned his glance with a gleam in her eye. Jack licked his lips and considered the motorcycles. "Can you get one to work?"

Sam immediately circled one, examining its parts and its design. It was less bulky than an earth-bound bike. The engine was slimmer and the gas tank non-existent. She stood and straddled the motorcycle, grabbing the handlebars and looking down on each side of the bike. She tapped something on the far side with the toe of her boot, and the bike started up, its engine a quiet rumble. She gave Jack a triumphant look.

"Sweet!" Jack glanced around. "I'll go with Carter. You two stay here and hold the gateroom. If there's going to be trouble when we dial, you'll have to make sure we still have access to the gate."

"We're in Interceptor Central!" Daniel argued, motioning at all the trucks.

"Just avoid them for now, and do the best you can. Maybe they'll come out after us and leave the garage unattended."

"We will hold the gate, O'Neill," Teal'c promised.

Jack climbed on the back of the bike and shifted his gun so it was resting on his thigh. He looked back at them. "If the gate engages and it gets too hot in here, you get the hell out. Don't wait for us."

Sam glanced back at him, and he met her gaze. She nodded slowly, face grim. She knew the score.

"We're not leaving you behind," Daniel protested.

"If it's your lives or none, Daniel, get the hell out. Understand me?" Jack glared at him.

"Time it, Daniel," Sam said to him. She handed over the watch. He refused to take it.

"You need that so you can see how much time you have."

"We'll get back here as fast as we can, Daniel," Jack said. "If we don't make it, we don't make it."

"Time it," Sam repeated. "When it gets close to 40 minutes, you need to get out or you'll lose your chance."

Daniel stared at her with worried eyes. "Sam…"

"We must return, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c insisted softly. "If they are captured, we will be their best chance of escape." He didn't say that capture was unlikely. They all knew death was the most obvious reason they would not make it back.

Daniel reluctantly took the watch, blue eyes seeking out first Sam's and then Jack's gaze. "Get your asses back here in time."

Sam grinned at him. "Don't worry."

"Good luck," Jack told him, reaching out to give him an affectionate pat on the side of his head.

Daniel nodded under his hand. "You too."

Jack exchanged a glance with Teal'c. _If things go wrong, get him out of here._

Teal'c nodded and handed Jack the pack with the virtual reality gear inside, but there was stubbornness in his eyes that made Jack uneasy.

He hoped they'd get out when… if… the time came, but he couldn't shake the feeling that if he and Carter came to their ends, Daniel and Teal'c would soon join them.

_Never leave a man behind…_

\+ + +

**[ maintain chaos ]**

_Sam_

It took her a few shaky starts to learn how to drive the motorcycle. It changed gears automatically, but the throttle was under her left boot, the brakes were under her right. Opposite of most Earth vehicles. No hand controls like most Earth bikes. It was a bit awkward at first, and with the Colonel's weight on the back, she almost dumped it a couple of times.

She smoothed out fairly quickly though with a few practice lurches and plenty of Jack's swearing.

"For cryin' out loud, Carter, you'll kill us before the Interceptors even know we're here!"

"Sorry!"

Then they were speeding down the street, eating up the distance, heading to the one, long building she knew was the key.

They circled it slowly on the bike, Sam trying to picture the map in her head. She drove around to the far side and there was the door. It was big. Truck-sized.

"Maybe we can drive right in," Jack said.

Sam stopped the bike and climbed off, letting Jack slide up into the driver's seat and take control. She took the pack and slid the gear on, plugging in. The black and blue world of The System surrounded her. She easily found the control board she was looking for and opened the door. Beyond it was a long, wide hallway. She took the gear off quickly and slid behind Jack on the bike. He'd been watching how she controlled it, and his first ride was much smoother than hers had been. He was a capable motorcycle rider on his own, she already knew.

They followed the hallway as quickly as Jack dared to ride. They didn't want to suddenly come up on a group of Interceptors. Sam leaned forward against Jack's shoulder. "There's a spiral ramp coming up. There's a control panel at the bottom. That's where the signal from the DHD is coming from."

He nodded once indicating he'd heard, and then they were riding down the ramp, circling lower and lower. Sam looked off to the sides as they went, and could see into the different levels of the building. On each floor there were rows upon rows of humans, reclined in chairs, wires connecting them to The System. It was eerily quiet and the air was heavy. As they got deeper, they came upon levels with rows of glass tanks, each filled with a clear liquid and a human being, cords running from their heads and their hands, bodies motionless and suspended in time.

"Jesus…" Sam whispered, mouth running dry.

"I know," Jack murmured quietly, not looking to the sides. His gaze remained forward and focused on the ramp, but Sam could see the tightness in his jaw.

She couldn't help it. She had to look. How much memory was in a human mind? Science thought it might be infinite. Enough to run a computer system? How much was in thousands of human minds? It was creepily fascinating, but Sam was tiring of it. She just wanted to go home now.

There was no DHD at the bottom of the ramp, so Sam connected to the panel there. Immediately she found it, isolated inside the control board. When she brought it up on her visor, a panel suddenly opened in front of the plug-in port. She lifted the helmet and glanced down. It was a small, flat panel of gate symbols. "It's here," she said, relief coursing through her.

"Finally," Jack muttered.

But even as she pressed the first symbol, the rumbling started around them, and there was an ominous flickering of the lights.

\+ + +

**[ unwavering ]**

_Daniel_

The rumbling started nearly 20 minutes after Jack and Sam had ridden off. Daniel ran to the access door and glanced down inside. Nothing had happened yet, but the rumbling was getting louder. He glanced up at Teal'c who appeared quite concerned.

"I believe The System has become aware of our intentions," Teal'c said.

Daniel agreed. He was about to suggest they get down to the gateroom, when the doors opened at one end of the garage and Interceptors began filing silently in. Teal'c ducked quickly and moved silently toward Daniel.

"What do we do?" Daniel whispered.

Teal'c grabbed the cord and yanked it free of the truck wheel then motioned for Daniel to follow him. They moved quietly around the vehicles avoiding the silent Interceptors who began climbing into the trucks. The low grumble of engines filled the room.

"They're going after Jack and Sam," Daniel said, looking pointedly at Teal'c.

Teal'c nodded. "We cannot fight them all. We will let them go."

Daniel realized they didn't have a choice. They watched from behind a worktable as the trucks filed out and drove up the ramp. When the last one had cleared the door, they heard it slide shut with a loud clang. They glanced at each other.

"The door has closed," Teal'c said worriedly.

"Maybe there's a way to switch to manual override," Daniel suggested. "If Jack and Sam come in hot, they can't stop to open the door."

Teal'c nodded, and they made their way up toward the garage door.

\+ + +

_Sam_

She pushed the last gate symbol and then glanced at Jack. He was looking nervously around them, feet tapping against the floor, legs flexing as he held the weight of the bike. She pushed the center button which she was quite sure was the button to engage the gate, and then she picked up the helmet and slid it on.

"What are you doing?" Jack demanded.

"Checking to make sure the gate engaged. You don't want to have to drive all the way back here, do you?"

Jack grimaced at her, but he let her plug in without protest. She moved quickly through the panels looking for the gateroom again.

"Shit!" Jack's voice was anxious behind her. She heard him shuffling and then she heard the distinct sound of an engine approaching. More than one, down the ramp.

She looked up just as a truck nosed around the corner. Jack was coming up behind her, gun raised. "Do what you're going to do, now!" he ordered.

She dove into the virtual display and started sliding panels aside as fast as she could. Behind her, she heard Jack's P-90 start chattering. The air whistled around her. Suddenly she was in the virtual gateroom, and she pulled up the energy readings. She felt something knock against the helmet and realized it was a dart. Suddenly Jack jerked back against her, his weight nearly sending her headlong into the wall. He grunted, and she felt a cold sick feeling in her gut.

"Colonel?"

"I'm fine! Are you done yet?"

"Almost!" She swallowed her worry and looked at the readings. It was negative. What the? She lifted the helmet and glanced down at the panel. Behind her, Jack grunted again, and his back bumped hers. She gritted her teeth and studied the panel. "Sir?"

"Carter, just do it!"

She heard a tapping sound and something moved in the corner of her vision. She glanced down and saw dark drops of liquid pattering onto the floor. The arm of Jack's shirt was turning deep crimson. He was standing directly behind her, protecting her from the darts, but some of them were obviously hitting their mark on him. She quickly scanned the panel. There was another button off to the side, this one blue. She hit it and it lit up. The panel pulled itself automatically back into the wall. She didn't bother sliding the helmet back on.

"Let's go, sir!"

He backed toward the bike with her behind him, P-90 firing at the oncoming Interceptors. Sam threw herself on the bike, and spun it around. They'd have to ride head-on into the Interceptors to get out. Jack had to finally give up his protective position, and he climbed on behind her. She tried to ignore the dark stains on the front of his uniform. He was shooting ahead of them as she gunned the engine and charged toward the trucks. The air whistled heavily with the oncoming darts, and they both crouched low over the bike. The handlebars afforded some protection, but Sam felt sharp pricks along her legs and one across her shoulder. She turned sharply as they reached the first truck, driving around the men and the vehicles. The Interceptors ran after them and tried to pull them from the bike, but she hit the throttle, and the bike leapt through the mass of men. She had to brake hard and put a foot down to catch their weight as they reached the first sharp curve. Jack grabbed her around the waist and swore in her ear.

The darts hit the ground around them, but then she had them balanced again and they were riding up on the continuous curve, the spiral protecting them from anymore shots.

\+ + +

_Daniel_

"The gate is activated!" Daniel yelled.

Teal'c waved at him from his position at the bottom of the ramp. He stood with chains in hand, the garage door opened a few feet to keep trucks from getting in, and so they could keep watch outside. The manual override had been painfully easy. Teal'c had pulled the wires from the door that led into the wall, and the door had settled more heavily on it's wheels. The chain controlled the massive door manually.

Daniel checked the watch and noted the time as the wormhole formed and _whooshed_ out below him in the gateroom. It cast the room in a bluish glow, the surface reflecting in waves off the walls and the floor. Daniel lowered the cord and re-fastened it to the truck's wheel.

"Daniel Jackson," Teal'c called. Daniel lifted his head and glanced up. Teal'c motioned to him. "We have one truck returning."

Daniel ran up the ramp and took a position across from Teal'c, lying down just below the opening of the door, heads and guns the only things sticking out. They trained their weapons on the approaching truck.

\+ + +

_Sam_

The trucks began to catch up with them as they raced toward the open door of the memory archive building. They remained a distance behind, but the darts began to streak toward them again.

"Carter, you're going to have to go faster," Jack muttered at her.

She laid on the throttle some more, and the bike's engine took on a higher tone and sped up. She was worried about Jack. He was pressed against her back, and she could feel his blood seeping through her shirt. It was too much.

"Sir, please hold on," she pleaded as they approached the door.

"I'm fine, Carter," he said in reply, but his voice sounded strained, and of course he'd lie about that.

As they shot through the open door, they were confronted by more trucks, some already in motion to pursue them. Darts hit the side of the bike, and then Jack groaned and slammed heavily into her back. The bike swerved as Sam jarred the handlebars, and she struggled to bring it back under control. One wrong move at this speed and they were dead anyway, never mind the darts.

Jack leaned heavily against her back now. He'd started firing as they came through the door, and now she felt the rifle tap lightly against her hip as he lowered it and fought to hold on. "Colonel!"

"Get down, Carter!" He pushed her angrily down over the bike so she was protected from the darts but still able to drive.

She realized there was nothing to do but get them back to the gate and off of this planet. She said a silent prayer and urged the bike faster.

\+ + +

_Daniel_

"I'm almost out of ammo!" Daniel yelled as another Interceptor fell, this one before he got out of the truck.

Teal'c gave him a troubled glance, and tossed him a clip. "It is our last!"

Daniel felt his hopes start to sink as his weapon clicked empty. He released the empty clip and loaded the new one. Jack and Sam had to get here soon, or else they'd lose the gate.

"There!" Teal'c shouted, pointing between two trucks that were parked several dozen yards from the garage door. Daniel looked, and there was the bike racing toward them, trucks behind them, Interceptors leaning out and firing.

"Get ready!" Daniel fired a few more shots and then ran back down into the nearly empty garage to lower the cord.

\+ + +

_Sam_

Jack had dropped the P-90 a few blocks before. He had hooked one arm around her waist, and she drove with one hand and held his wrist tightly with the other. He wasn't completely out of it, but he was slumped heavily against her back, and tilted dangerously from time to time until Sam yelled at him or jerked his wrist, bringing him awake. He'd struggle to right himself and couldn't disguise his grunts of pain and effort. The back of her shirt was soaked through.

There were trucks parked in front of the garage door. Sam swore loudly. There was a narrow channel between the two vehicles. She could fit. She could definitely fit, but… The trucks behind her gained as she slowed, and she had to speed up again, afraid that one more dart would take Jack down for good.

She suddenly saw Teal'c stand up briefly in the garage-door opening, gun in hand and firing to cover them. She felt an explosion of relief and gratitude in her chest. She'd have to go in fast and then dump the bike and hope they didn't hit anything.

The trucks didn't even slow behind her. They ran right up behind her and crashed headlong into the parked vehicles as she shot between the two of them and then barreled into the garage. Immediately she released the throttle and wrenched the bike sideways, laying it down on the ramp and letting it slide away from them as she tightened her grip on Jack's arm. They hit the floor hard and slid fast and then they were tumbling and Jack was ripped away from her, and she felt pain shooting through her arms and her legs and then her head as she came to a sudden stop against the far wall of the garage. Moments later, Jack's limp form crashed into her, and the wall rushed up to meet her, the left side of her face exploding in pain.

She laid there in the aftermath, panting and trying to breathe through aching lungs. She wasn't sure she could move.

\+ + +

**[ faith ]**

_Daniel_

"Sam! Jack!" Daniel ran toward them as they slid across the floor and into the wall. The bike crashed noisily into one of the empty trucks, sending scrap metal and parts ricocheting across the smooth black floor. He heard the echo of the big garage door slamming back into place as Teal'c closed it behind the bike. He reached them seconds later, and eased Jack's still form away from Sam. She turned with difficulty to face him, still conscious. She had blood on her face and her breath sounded labored, but she looked up at him with sharp, aware eyes.

He looked down at Jack. His uniform was soaked in blood, and Daniel could see the tip of one dart sticking out of his arm. It was a very narrow projectile. Maybe that was good? Less damage?

Jack opened his eyes when Daniel spoke to him, but his gaze wasn't solid and he mumbled something that didn't make sense.

"Did the gate open?" Sam demanded, pushing herself up to a sitting position.

"Yes," Daniel answered. They looked up as Teal'c ran down the ramp to join them.

"Let's get out of here, now!" Sam ordered. "The Colonel is in bad shape. We have to get him home if he's going to have a chance."

They picked him up and dragged him toward the access door with Teal'c following behind them, weapon ready and pointed toward the garage door. The door was shaking with the effort to slide it from the outside.

They set Jack down next to the shaft to the gateroom, and Daniel quickly slid down onto the cord. He lowered himself quickly, taking a quick look around to establish that no one was waiting for them and that the gate still shimmered brightly beckoning them home.

He was a few lengths from the floor when the air suddenly closed in around him violently and pain exploded in his head. He dropped the last few feet to the floor and gasped for breath.

"Daniel!"

He heard Sam shouting at him from above. What the hell just happened? He struggled to stay conscious, and when he regained the air in his lungs, he pushed himself up on his arms to look around.

Something hard smashed into him, surrounded him, squeezed him painfully tight and tried to break him apart. There was a sharp pain in his ears, and he saw blood falling on the floor below him, felt it running down his neck as he collapsed back down.

It took longer this time to regain his faculties. He was aware of the pain first, throbbing in his extremities and in his ears and his sinuses. He could hear Sam shouting his name, but she sounded far away. He didn't want to move, but he remembered Jack and the gate and… he twitched, trying to move.

"No!" he heard Sam yelling at him. His ears opened a bit and he focused on the sound. "Daniel! Don't move! It can sense when you're moving and it sends out a concussive wave!"

A… what? He wriggled a bit, his position uncomfortable.

"Stop moving, Daniel!"

"Sam?" It sounded too quiet to his ears so he gathered strength. "Sam!"

"I hear you! I think you found the weapon that neutralized us when we first came through the gate, Daniel! I think it's some sort of concussive blast. Teal'c and I could feel it all the way up here! The activation of the gate must trigger it, and it senses motion and living beings!"

"What do I do?"

There was nothing for a moment, and then Sam said, "I can't get to the panel to shut it down! The Interceptors are coming through the garage door!"

Daniel could now hear shooting above. Oh God. Oh crap. "Sam?"

"I'm here. I think it's coming from that strange device on the wall, Daniel. Remember it?"

"Yeah."

"I'm going to lower myself and try to take it out with a zat. The Colonel had good luck with that before."

"No!" Daniel twitched with the desire to move.

"Daniel…"

"Stay there! You have to lower Jack down. I'll take out the device."

"Daniel… you're hurt."

"So are you."

There was a moment of silence in which Daniel could only hear the guns chattering above him. And then, "Try to hit it dead-on. If you don't get it, I'll give it another shot when I come down."

Daniel moved his hand slowly, bringing it up toward his belt. It would take a few seconds to arm the zat and then aim and fire. He'd have to get to his knees at least to have the best shot. He tried to move his eyes and get his bearings in the room.

Above him, he heard Sam yell, "Teal'c!"

Not good. He counted to three and then pushed himself up, grabbing for the zat. He aimed as the device suddenly vibrated and let out another concussive wave. He fired as the wave slammed into him and pain enveloped him. He tasted blood and felt like he was choking on it as both darkness and the floor raced up to meet him.

\+ + +

_Sam_

Teal'c was hit. She heard the whistle in the air, and saw him stagger. He waved away her concerned yell. He would be okay for a while longer. She turned back to Daniel's still form on the floor below and called to him. He shifted a bit but didn't answer. The last concussive wave had seemed to end prematurely, and Sam was pretty sure the zat fire had done the trick. She was reluctant to lower Jack into the line of fire to find out, but Teal'c couldn't last forever.

Her face hurt, and her vision had been slowly darkening in one eye as the tissue above her left cheekbone swelled painfully.

"Sam?" Daniel's voice came weakly from below, and Sam expelled a harsh breath of relief.

"Daniel! Are you okay?"

"Not really, no," he answered dryly, and Sam smiled. "Did I get it?"

"I think so, but there's no way to tell unless we test it."

"Ah. Great."

"Want me to slide down?"

"No. Get Jack ready. I'll try it."

She watched as Daniel shifted a bit more. He made a major move and brought his hands up over his head. Nothing happened. He lifted his upper body off the floor. Nothing happened.

"I think you got it, Daniel!"

He sat up completely, and she saw him glance at his wrist. "Sam! There's only a few minutes left! You two have got to get Jack down here."

Sam pulled the cord up and quickly started winding it around Jack's shoulders in a make-shift harness. It wasn't the best way to lower him considering his injuries, but leaving him here was an obvious death sentence. Teal'c backed up to her position as she led the cord around her body and then braced her feet on the lip of the access hatch. She felt Teal'c at her back, picking up the cord, letting it curl around his waist as an anchor. She eased Jack over the edge, and with Teal'c's strength, they lowered him down.

\+ + +

_Daniel_

Daniel grabbed Jack's legs as soon as they were within reach. He directed the taller man's form down onto the floor and then untied the cord, glancing up at Sam. "He's clear!"

There was a flurry of movement above, and he heard Sam and Teal'c yelling to each other.

"Go!" Teal'c shouted.

Sam dropped down onto the cord and slid downwards rapidly. Daniel tapped her hip when she was close, and she dropped down beside him with an involuntary grunt. When she stood facing him, they stared at each other.

"Holy crap," Sam exclaimed, her eyes studying his face.

He said the same thing as he looked at hers. Her left eye was swollen nearly shut, and her uniform was soaked in blood. "It's Jack's," she told him worriedly. She focused her one good eye on him, and he saw the concern in her eyes. He could feel the blood running over his face, had to blink it out of his eyes, so he knew he looked a mess.

"It looks worse than it feels," he said, but she didn't look convinced.

Above them Teal'c's P-90 went alarmingly silent.

"Teal'c!" Daniel shouted. He and Sam craned their necks upward trying to see him. The whistle of the darts whined overhead.

There was a flurry of movement and then Teal'c's boots appeared in the shaft. He grabbed one handful of the cord and then slid down far too fast, losing his grip and falling the last few yards. He landed on his back with a sickening thump, and the front of his shirt was as soaked as Jack's. Daniel pulled a shallowly buried dart from his thigh, the crimson stain already spreading rapidly.

"Teal'c?"

Teal'c tried to struggle groggily to his feet, and Daniel slid an arm under his and across his back, helping him up. He looked over to where Sam struggled to get Jack up. "Teal'c, you have to help me out. We need to get both you and Jack through the gate, and we don't have much time!"

Teal'c nodded tiredly, shifting his feet to get them beneath him. "Let us go." He grasped one of Daniel's shoulders, but didn't lean on him heavily. Daniel got them both over to Sam and Jack, and together he and Sam pulled Jack up between them.

Steadily they walked up the ramp toward the gate.

"Please stay open," Daniel muttered under his breath.

"Quick," Sam urged.

They glanced at each other and tightened their hold on the other two, and then they walked through the gate.

\+ + +

They landed in a heap in a small grassy meadow, sun shining high above them. Behind them the wormhole from The System's planet evaporated.

Daniel laid there in numb disbelief. The sun was warm, and he stared up at blue sky above. A fresh breeze blew across his blood-wet skin. There was no persistent hum, only the light brush of wind through the grass and something that sounded like a bird in the distance.

Then Jack gasped.

Daniel struggled to his feet and helped Sam up. She looked wearily at him through her one uninjured eye. "Dial it up, Daniel, before they figure out where we went."

They helped Jack and Teal'c away from the danger zone of the gate, and Daniel dialed home, leaving bloody hand prints on each symbol. He wiped at them superfluously with his sleeve and then gave up. The wormhole engaged, and Sam entered their code in the GDO. Daniel went to join her.

"It's clear," she reported, meeting his gaze with a faint smile.

He took a deep breath, and they picked up Jack and Teal'c. All four of them staggered up the ramp and through the gate toward home.

\+ + +

**[ satellites ]**

_George_

"Sir! Unscheduled off-world activation!"

George Hammond made his way lithely down the stairs to the control room. Unscheduled activations weren't that unusual, but it'd been weeks since the last one, and they still had one team out there MIA.

Sergeant Harriman looked up at him in wonder. "It's SG-1, sir!"

George glanced at him but said nothing. It was too early for celebration. With a few words, he put the defensive team on guard around the gate and told Walter to open the iris. The iris slid open, and they waited anxiously, eyes on the stargate.

They came through together, all of them in a line, arms around each other to keep them upright. George took in a silent breath as he realized their condition. "Medical team to the gateroom immediately!" He was already on the intercom and then barreling down the stairs to the gateroom. "Stand down!" he told the guards as he entered, and they obediently lowered their weapons but remained alert.

"Major Carter!" He addressed Sam since Colonel O'Neill was obviously incapacitated. She looked up at him through a fine layer of grime and blood and swollen tissue.

"Yes, sir."

"Where the hell have you been all this time?"

She looked to answer him, mouth opening wearily, but then Daniel's legs gave out, and he was falling into her, and she stopped looking at George altogether to catch him. They went down together next to Jack and Teal'c, and the medical team swarmed into the room and over the fallen team. All George could do was get out of their way and hope there would still be a team to talk to once this was over.

"Well done, SG-1," he said quietly, even though no one could hear him.

\+ + +

**[ a new day ]**

_Jack_

Jack woke slowly, uncertain of where he was. There was a fogginess to his brain that took a while to evaporate. He tried to open his eyes and blinked rapidly.

Several dark shapes moved into his line of vision.

"Sir?"

Carter? He moved a little, a good-sized wave of pain moving through his body. He groaned.

"Jack?"

And that was Daniel. Awareness came rushing at him, and he took a deep breath, opening his eyes.

They all stood there next to him. He stared at them. They were covered in bandages and looked tired and worn, but they looked healthy and happy, and they all smiled at him. Even Teal'c.

"Where?"

Daniel leaned over a bit. "You're in the infirmary, Jack. We're back on Earth."

Jack glanced at Carter. She nodded in confirmation. Jack sank back into his pillow in relief.

"What's the last thing you remember, sir?" Sam's voice was soft, and Jack realized it was quite late at night. He glanced at the clock to be sure. 23:00.

"The bike," he answered, his own voice sounding thick and slow. "Riding out of that building…"

Sam nodded. "You were hit several times by darts. You lost a lot of blood. You're going to be okay with some rest."

Jack didn't respond, but he met her gaze with understanding eyes.

"We met with the Asgard this morning," Daniel said. "Several of their ships are on their way to The System's planet right now. They'll analyze the situation and take care of it."

Jack managed a nod. He'd felt a cold shiver at the mention of The System. He looked up at all of them. "You got me out."

They glanced at each other, smiling, and then at him. "Well, you took us most of the way, sir," Carter said.

"So we brought you home," Daniel finished.

Jack felt his eyes growing heavy. He could sleep now. He could relax. They were home.

Teal'c gazed down at him with a faint smile. "Sleep, O'Neill. We will still be here in the morning."

"Yeah. You will, won't you?" Jack returned the smile. A warm hand landed on his shoulder.

"Indeed."

~end!~


End file.
